I got a fig!

I was so excited when I saw it start to swell and knew if was going to ripen. Finally came the day I decided to pick it the next day. My timing must have been right, because that morning I saw ants climbing on it so it had to be ready. The blemish you see is where they started to haul away bits of it, probably for a feast at the Hare Krishna temple in Antville.

The picture is fuzzy because even though I took multiples they were either too dark or too close and I didn’t use the closeup button on the camera. Normally I would take pictures and then view them so where it would be possible to take others if all were bad I could but in this case the tongue won and before I checked out the photos I had picked the fig, washed it, did the thank you thing, and consumed it.  Slowly — small bites and as much chewing as the melt in your mouth experience of a fresh fig will allow.

This is the first fig I have gotten on my fig tree in many years. When I was progressing towards the end stage liver disease thing, I lacked energy and early in the process marginally important things got left undone, more and more being left by the wayside as I went deeper into fatigue.

That meant stuff that was fun but not economical like my fig tree. Which meant I wouldn’t wrap it in the fall and it would topkill. It would come back the following year from the roots but by that time the summer would be over and no ripe figs.

Two winters ago I did wrap it but with the 5th coldest February in history and slightly inadequate bundling I still lost most of the top. This past winter everything went right so it hit the deck running this spring. Abundant moisture during the spring and early summer meant lots of fruit set, the question was whether the cool August we have been having would allow for ripening of the figs.

While August has been great for human comfort, we have been having cool nights which have greatly slowed the tomatoes from ripening. I thought the same might apply to the figs.  That is what happens when it topkills, it sets a lot of green figs, then cool September nights hit and ripening stops before I get anything.

It remains to be seen if more will ripen.  If this is the only one, and I value my labor at minimum wage, it probably works out to something like $50 a pound (75 euros per kilo) for that single fig,which would make it an opulence, and well worth it IMHO.

As figs are abundant producers when they have a long enough season, if rapid global climate change ends up manifesting as a tropical climate for New Vrindaban as Srila Prabhupada predicted, the fig tree and I will have a beautiful relationship.