Under the Spreading Fig Tree

When we moved to North Georgia we started planning a
vegetable garden, talked about fruit trees, about how we
wanted to be picking our own apples and peaches.

Gil wanted figs. "I've always liked figs," he said, "I'm
getting a fig tree."

"Good," I said, "every man should be safe under his
own fig tree."

He gave me a hard look. "Where did you get that?"

"It's in the Bible," I said, "There's a lot about fig trees
in the Bible" I was stirring the little compost pile we
had started after subscribing to Organic Gardening.
Our food would be organically grown, free of
pesticides and chemicals, bursting with nutrition.

"But I think it's more of a bush," I said, "They're
always saying trees, but I think it's bushes."

My grandmother used to stand on the back porch and
pick figs and eat them at one of the houses we rented
when I was a child. I don't think I ever got a good ripe
one, for she picked them as fast as they turned. The only
flavor I remembered was a clammy sweetness.

"I think it must be an acquired taste," I said. But he was
casting about for the right place to plant and didn't hear me.
He said he'd been talking to a man in Knoxville about fig
trees and was told that sometimes during hard winters the
figs die back to the ground and then don't get enough growth
the next summer to bear figs.

"He said he bends his over and puts old carpets over them
and then they don't die back," Gil said. "They need to be in a
somewhat sheltered place."

"Knoxville gets colder than here," I said, "Our fig bush never
did die back from freezing. But it was sheltered, I guess, right
against the back porch."

For 18 months we were back and forth, 3 or 4 days working
in Chicago, 3 or 4 days building our periodical distribution
route in the three Southern states, interspersed with a day's
drive either way. Each time we headed south we brought a
few more of our possessions, moving even our furniture
down in the old Ford panel truck a piece at a time. When
my sister complained a few years afterward that it took them
three days to move, I couldn't keep from laughing.

When at last we were fully residents of Georgia, we were still
traveling much of the time. Our route was Atlanta to Knoxville
to Nashville to Birmingham with stops at some of the smaller
towns along the way, and we did not always make it back
home in the evening.

Ah, but there were the weekends, and so it was on one
Saturday when Gil was putting away the groceries he'd
bought that he asked, "Do you happen to know where the
shovel is? I've bought a fig tree."

"Bush," I said, "and it's by the shed where you left it."

I walked up behind the house in time to see him tamping
down the dirt around the little tree. It was about two-feet
tall, with narrow, glossy-green leaves.

There was a most satisfied look on his face as he stood back,
shovel in hand. "I'll be eating figs next year," he said.

"Not from that you won't," I said, "that's not a fig tree. Or bush."

"The sign said it was. It said 'Special Today- Fig Trees, $6.95
each.' And I asked the stock boy to be sure. He said it was a
fig tree. He said they'd sold a lot of them. Everybody likes figs."

"You bought it at the grocery store?"

"Yes," he said, "What's wrong with that?" and he turned back
to admire his little plant some more, looking so pleased that I
hadn't the heart to continue arguing with him.

A couple hours later I heard him telling our neighbor about his
new fig tree.

"Fig newtons?" the neighbor said, "I like fig newtons, but I
didn't know you could plant them"

The first hard freeze that winter killed it. The spindly
branches snapped in two when Gil tried to straighten the
little plant."Maybe it will come back out in the spring," he
said, still holding the pieces in his hand.

It didn't. But early in March after a trip to a nursery, I
presented him with a fig bush. We planted it on the south
side of our shed. And I had acquired a book that showed
the different varieties of ficus, which includes the edible fig
as well as the ficus that Gil had bought, a tropical plant used
as a house plant where winters are cold.

It was news to me, I said, I wasn't familiar with house plants,
although I have seen the little trees since then, some five or
six feet tall in pots in hotel lobbies and reception areas.

"Then how did you know it wasn't the kind of fig I wanted?"
he asked.

"Adam and Eve," I said, "Remember those little narrow leaves?
They wouldn't have hidden three or four pubic hairs, let alone
covered their nakedness."

The fig bush flourished, growing as tall as the shed, and it
bore abundantly. The figs were best when they almost fell
into the hand at a touch. Sometimes Gil would bring some to
me in a bowl, but most of the time we stood at the bush
eating them, just as my grandmother did long ago.