06-28-2013 First fig!!!!!

Yesterday, June 27th, I had the surprise and pleasure to find out my first fig was ripe and ready to eat.

It tasted just as good as I remembered.

While figs are harvested in August in our part of the world, some older trees in some varieties like my "Violette de Bordeaux" will produce an early, small flush of fruit, generally not more than about 20. They grow rather large and ripen six weeks ahead of the real crop: a tease, but a tasty one.

While D.H. Lawrence waxes poetic on the eating of a fig, my early ones hardly ever make it to the kitchen. They taste best right there  under the tree.

My bird loving friends will be happy to know that some feathered hoodlum beat me to the harvest this morning and already took its tally and that, by the way, it was the ripest one!

While generally referred to as a fruit is really an infructuescence or  an inversed flower. What you see there are all little flowers that have not opened yet and will not since we do not have the tiny wasp that is supposed to go in through the ostiole (small hole at the bottom) to pollinate it.

That white drop is sap that the fig sheds when you pick it. It is a variation on latex, very sticky. Some people are allergic to it. Good thing I am not!!!!