Rainbow

Abandoned

This little house has seen better days. Talk about your fixer-uppers!

Empty Field

I love this empty field near my house. Not long ago it was an olive grove, but one day they (the infamous "they"!) came in with bulldozers and uprooted all the trees. That was very upsetting...the death of an olive tree seems sacrilegious around here! But I have come to appreciate the beauty of the field since then. I couldn't see it before, what with all trees in the way!

Eduardo Scissorhands

Are you getting tired of this little tour around the Molfettan countryside? Just a bit of patience and I'll soon take you back to town!

The countryside is very important in Molfettan culture. The two bastions of the local economy were traditionally the sea and the countryside. The sea for fishing and commerce, the countryside for agriculture: olives, mainly, but definitely not only.

Locally, olive trees are pruned so that all the upward growing branches are cut off and only the downward growing ones remain. This facilitates the harvesting of the olives...you just have to rake down the branches to pull off the olives, rather than having to climb up into the tree, chasing after the fruit on those upper branches.

The result is some pretty strange looking gnarled and contorted trees. I'm not sure what the owner of this tree had in mind with his attempt at topiary, but it looks kind of like a French poodle to me!

Behind the Red Door

What lies behind the red door? We may never know...and it's probably nothing all that interesting anyway. What does interest me is why someone would want to paint the door to this tiny little building in the middle of nowhere out in the countryside *so* red? A burst of creativity? A rebel streak? A good deal on red paint, perhaps?

Under the Burning Sun

This is my first attempt at this kind of nature photography. I didn't quite get the distinction betwen the flowers and the wall in the background that I would have liked...I'll have to keep working on it!
These are what's left of the wild garlic flowers that grow along the coast. The hot sun has baked them brown, like the grass behind them. The wall is a falling down example of the dry stone walls (dry meaning no mortar is used, just one stone piled up on top of the next) that you find throughout the countryside.