Figs?

For Christmas one year when we were living in Apalachicola, my mother gave me two fig trees, little fellows, to plant in the rectory yard there. By the time we left in September 1998 they were both fairly good size, and producing; but being reluctant to leave them, I dug up one and brought it home with me. There was already one fig tree here, that had been giving me July morning happiness since Navy days, being home on leave during early July long ago back into the 1970s, perhaps the sixties. 

Typically, the fruit is ready to pick the first week or so of July, and a great breakfast is walking round a fig tree, picking and eating. My experience, probably imagination but no matter, is that walking round and round a large fig tree slowly, eating and picking as I go, gives time for more to ripen before I get back to that spot.  

The fig tree we brought home from Apalachicola was planted near the other one on the west side of the house, a sunny spot. But in 2002 we extended a new kitchen out into that area, so the fig trees had to be trimmed back and potted, then replanted later. Now, both are in the front yard, one up near the house, the other down between two cedar trees. Not the best spots because it’s shadier than they like, and there’s been little or no fruit on either the past ten years. 

This year, though the one in the high part of the yard is loaded with little green figs. It will be a happy July if lots of them ripen. The other one has a few green nubbins but not many. Both trees are large though. There’ll be no cursing fig trees in my yard a la Mark 11, because both of these are beloved trees with cherished histories. But if the tree down in the lower yard doesn’t produce this year, it will be time to cut it way back and move it in the fall, to a spot that gets more sun.

TW+ in +Time