To life!
Wednesday September 29th 2021, 9:09 pm
Filed under: Friends,Garden,Life

After a week of watching that last fig slowly, slowly gain color and ripen as the leaves started to curl and turn yellow with the summer ending, Monday I finally got to eat it, wistful that that was going to be it for the year. You wait so long. They’re so good. And then they’re over so fast. (Usually, those Black Jacks are so big that I split them in half and share but this time he went, No, you love those, you have it.)

Yesterday evening I went outside and there, top and center and very obvious on my not-big tree was another last fig. I did quite the doubletake. It’s not like I hadn’t looked before, and now it was copying last week’s surprise peach! All I can figure is that it had had a leaf curled around it hiding it that had blown away. I knew there had been a fig there but I’d thought it long gone. How had the squirrels missed this?

Anyway, it was delicious, and I looked around the garden with a grin thinking, Okay, what’s next, guys? I mean what, an October cherry?

I kid myself.

And then.

Several months ago I gave one of my Anya seedlings to a friend who lives in a hotter area nearer Sacramento, and last night she regretfully told me her baby apricot had not survived the summer heat there.

I had one that I’d tested a self-watering system on before we flew off to see grandkids for the Fourth of July, only, the setup was in place on a day that hit 100F. It was a water bottle screwed into an absorbent clay piece going into the soil near the roots–which sounded great, but it appears I, um, cooked them. That bottle got hot! The seedling dropped every leaf and the top turned black and I was glad I’d only tried it out on one of them.

Every now and then I zapped a bit of water its way with the hose out of sheer stubborn unwillingness to allow it to be dead. For three months. Nada.

A few days ago I was thrilled to finally get to wear a sweater again. Well, so much for autumn no matter what the fig tree or my sweaters may think because today we started a new heat wave. Again.

And…

…Look who showed up for the party. The top is still just as dead as it ever was, but every node where there had been a leaf is now sprouting the beginnings of a whole new branch. Overnight.

I sent that photo to my friend, hoping she hadn’t tossed hers?

She had not. She was thrilled. We are hopeful.

I have no idea if I can get mine to stay leafed out all winter? If I keep it right up against the house? Except that the contractors finally gave me dates and they want everything away from the house that can be moved and it’ll be about Halloween when they’re done.

We’ll just have to find out. Onward to next spring!

 


2 Comments so far
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Tree whisperer…

Comment by Jayleen Hatmaker 09.30.21 @ 6:33 am

That is amazing! Life finds a way sometimes.

Comment by ccr in MA 09.30.21 @ 12:47 pm



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