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This blog is dedicated to Malta - my island home. My aim is not to bore you with history but to share my thoughts and a few facts together with a photo or two. For a more in -depth background of the island please go here. The purpose of this blog is not to point out the short-comings of the island. There are plenty that do that already. My wish is to show you the beauty of an island at the cross roads of the Mediterranean, a melting pot of history; a place where fact and fiction are sometimes fused to create unique myths and legends; a country that has been conquered so many times that our culture is a mish mesh of the lands that surround us and of lands far away. I confess that my greatest desire is to make you fall in love with this tiny enchanting island.

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Monday 18 July 2011

Ruby Tuesday: Of Flowers And Rubble Walls

Sometimes it happens that I come across a scene that looks perfect to my eyes – the colours and the textures working together to create an imprint in my mind; and since I want to record that imprint forever, out comes my camera and I snap a shot. It’s a moment in late spring and all three plants in the photo are in bloom: to the left - a cactus plant that will give us prickly pear fruits in September (you can read more about prickly pears here); to the right -  a red oleander and, at the bottom of the photo, a caper bush (which I talked about in my post When The Capers Bloom), all growing alongside a rubble wall. I like to call rubble walls ‘the stone hedges of Malta’. Rubble walls serve as retaining and boundary walls and are built without the use of cement or mortar. It takes skillful builders to ensure that the walls remain erect just by placing stones in such a way that they lock and stay in place.

Delimara (29)

Photographed at Delimara

The pop of red from the oleander provides the perfect hue for this week’s Ruby Tuesday. Other Ruby Tuesday posts may be viewed at Work Of The Poet.

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16 comments:

  1. Hmmm. Somehow I was waiting for a little more from this post. Perhaps I need to click all of the links and then I shall find what I felt myself anticipating. :)

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  2. Amazing that this plants could survive in between rocks or cement and they remain very beautiful!

    Ruby Tuesday

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  3. Lovely! My kind of place to wander and take photos - all day long! Love your header too! (first time visitor here) :) - Mirage

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  4. Perfect balance! Love the variety of foliage too.
    p.s. Frenchman's Creek is one of my very favorite Daphne DuMaurier books. :O)

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  5. Oleandar is one of my favorite flowers, mostly because it seems to endure just about anything!

    RED AND YELLOW LULLABY

    Red is the color of cherries, not cheese;
    Yellow the backs of the sweet honeybees;

    Red the fair hair of the Derry Town maid;
    Yellow the yolk of the brown egg fresh-laid;

    Red are the wounds of the sun going down;
    Yellow the daisies beloved by the clown;

    Rainbows of colors, delighting the eye—
    Yellow and scarlet for this lullaby.


    © 2011 by Magical Mystical Teacher

    Red and Yellow Rooster

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  6. great photo composition. i understand what you mean when you see something and that everything in that view fits.

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  7. Lovely summer shot, beautiful wall.

    It is COLD and RAINING here...

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  8. I love the colors and the textures in this photo Loree!

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  9. a lovely photo... i really love and admire the "rubble" wall...

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  10. Beautiful capture. Happy RT!

    Mine's here.

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  11. That's very pretty!

    MY RT can be found here, hope you can visit.

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  12. That looks really beautiful ! I can smell a hot summer day !

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  13. Stone hedges of Malta are so nice!

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  14. Hi Loree
    I love the stone hedges also and have admired them in your shots before [i think?]... how clever they are to make these so sturdy without any mortar...

    Hope you are having a fab summer.. it's torrential rain over this way...

    Have a great week.. ciao xxx Julie

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  15. A lovely image - makes me reminisce about Arizona, where there is similar vegetation and "rubble" walls. Love the color of the oleander flowers.

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