once upon a fig…..

Since featuring Erika Carter’s marvelous painting…..

(a portion seen here)

a confluence of FIGS !!!!

While browsing Volume Three of Kinfolk….I came upon this lovely illustration by Katie Stratton

which brought to mind luscious linen just used for pillows for a client.

Picking up custom forged fire screens for another client led me to downtown Santa Barbara to a side street only one block long…..

All of which sent my mind spinning off………

We once had a fig tree  (long before my tastes turned to the possibilities of slices wrapped in prosciutto…..).   My husband’s aunt brought a rooted branch from her tree in Palm Springs.  I planted it in our yard next to the front porch (the ‘why’ of that escapes me now).  Those were the days when I was happy if anything I planted grew…although the tree did not grow tall, it was prolific!  Every year a multitude of  figs – first a pretty green, turned brown and soft, oozing juice and attracting noxious pests which threatened my small children.  Having not the heart or the time to cut it down, I cleaned up the rotting fruit as it fell through the summer and the big leaves as they browned in fall.  I did once make a batch of fig newtons – but they were relegated to the ‘don’t bother to make that again’ category. 

I did not appreciate that tree!!!

….and where am I going with this tale of the fig???

Now, coming up on twenty-four years since we moved from that house, I have wished for that fig tree with regularity.

I’ve been set to thinking about what might be in my life at this very moment that I am not appreciating, not recognizing as a blessing………..perhaps seeing as a burden when, indeed, it may be anything but……….