As I walked up the hill towards Il-Lunzjata, where the Carmelite Fathers have a convent and a retreat house, I stopped to look at a 2.5m high plant overhanging the wall of a field. The flower was unknown to me until I heard the farmer asking me if I knew what it was. He stopped for a chat and I learnt that it was the flower of the Jerusalem Artichoke which they were harvesting at the moment. He told me to come and visit again in mid September to see the full glory of the field. He also told me that he could not understand how a section of his field was still flowering when it should have died out by now.
