I present to you, figs:

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I had lunch with a lovely friend today (so nice to see you, Daryl!) and we started talking about the fig trees on her terrace. I hadn’t thought much about fig trees on terraces until today, but all it took was one conversation for me to develop a firm and enthusiastic opinion. Fig trees on terraces: YES!  I need one immediately. You see, each fig is an amazing jewel. You don’t need a massive crop. One little tree will give you an embarrassment of riches. Look at these guys:

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JEWELS! Each time you eat one, how could you not feel like some sort of Persian princess? They make me think of warmth and luxury and exotic textiles. All things I’d really enjoy spending more time thinking about!  Furthermore, fig trees themselves have gorgeous leaves.

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 If I were a shy statue, that’s just the sort of shapely modesty leaf I’d reach for. And there’s more good news! Figs do well in pots. They’re Mediterranean plants, but that’s where the pot comes in — just bring them in to make your apartment a Persian palace during the winter.

One of my favorite poets, Louise Glück, has a gorgeous poem that begins and ends with figs.

Vespers

Once I believed in you; I planted a fig tree.
Here, in Vermont, country
of no summer. It was a test: if the tree lived,
it would mean you existed.

By this logic, you do not exist. Or you exist
exclusively in warmer climates,
in fervent Sicily and Mexico and California,
where are grown the unimaginable
apricot and fragile peach. Perhaps
they see your face in Sicily; here we barely see
the hem of your garment. I have to discipline myself
to share with John and Noah the tomato crop.

If there is justice in some other world, those
like myself, whom nature forces
into lives of abstinence, should get
the lion’s share of all things, all
objects of hunger, greed being
praise of you. And no one praises
more intensely than I, with more
painfully checked desire, or more deserves
to sit at your right hand, if it exists, partaking
of the perishable, the immortal fig,
which does not travel.

Gorgeous. I swoon when I read that poem. Perishable, immortal figs. The fruit you’d eat while sitting on the right hand of God. Yes. And also, on a totally non-poetic level, if Louise had put that fig in a pot, maybe she could still believe in God. Just sayin. Terraces, they’re made for fig trees.

Tags: Figs