My eyes were rolling with the fog and ears delighting in the sound of a foghorn in the midst of the city this morning as I looked out the kitchen window for the first glimpse of the day. Then I noticed a fig on the floor of the deck. A ripe fig! Not right under the tree where I might not have seen it but out in the open. Of course I hightailed it (what an image-evocative verb!) outdoors to investigate. Thank goodness I was dressed.
Now this fig tree has grown from a cutting from a tree that once gave me 42 figs in a single day at the first house I owned in Victoria. When I took stewardship of this present home I was moved to go back to that tree and ask for some twigs. Of the three ‘suggestions’, one took root and has spent the summer madly and gladly growing in a pot on the deck.
It formed many figs earlier this year and I debated removing them, thinking to direct the energy to growth both above and below the ground and not fruit production. But a feeling that the tree knew perfectly well what it was doing halted my intervention and it grew up and around and over the figs. I then thought that none would mature and stopped checking. So the fig this morning was a surprise and a gift. I sat beside the tree and ate the fig slowly, gratefully. Wondered what had nudged it into view. Peered into the wealth of leaves and found another fig wonderfully ripening! Look forward to this ‘harvest’.