In Praise of Figs

It seems as though everyone’s grandmother had a fig tree in the yard. My husband’s East Texas grandma had a huge one in her backyard that had a water hose left to trickle water at its base all summer. His granddad would back his pick-up close and dump a load of manure from the chicken house around the base of that fig. All of the kids (now in their 70s and 80s remember the smell of the water from that hose on a hot summer afternoon and the taste of fresh figs picked and eaten right off of the tree. Then there were the jars of homemade fig preserves, and fond memories of hot biscuits dripping with butter and slathered with this fig goodness. These days we have a huge fig tree in our garden next to our offices, and this morning I picked a handful of fresh figs. This tree is loaded with figs, but now so large and spread out that I will have to get a ladder to pick this late-season bounty, and I will have to go in search of the recipe for Nanny’s Fig Preserves.