Our new home in Wilmington, North Carolina has a very small, fenced-in back yard, where we have planted two fig trees in the hope of enjoying the sweet fruit in the future. Well, today, as I walked around our little yard I discovered both fig trees already have fruit (green, of course, but very real).

This triggered a memory of my parents' home on the east side of Youngstown, Ohio, where fruit trees of every sort seemed to grow. Most favorite of these were the three huge fig trees located at the bottom of a terraced slope which had rows of colorful gladiolas planted by my brother-in-law Joe (Martha's husband). These trees were very special to my father, and he did many things to protect them from the harsh winter climate of northern Ohio. When they were mere twigs, he wrapped them with black roofing paper; as they grew, he would dig a trench along side of each tree, and gently bend the supple trunk into the trench, securing it with u-shaped pins, cover the tree with fall leaves, and cover the leaves with dirt. When the trees could no longer be bent to the ground, he came up with the idea to build a collapsible shack (for easy spring removal) to surround the trees, including running electricity for an electric heater. The end result was Pa's fig trees gave an abundance of fruit around the end of July or early August.

Each mid-summer morning, Mama would pick fresh, sweet figs, gathering her apron into a drawstring sack, and fill it with the figs. Then she would take the gravel path that led from our house to Martha and Joe's house, calling softly to her little granddaughters in Italian-laced broken English, "Dianucce, Linducce, looka what Gremma hava for you." The girls always jumped with glee to hear that sweet voice and know that the delicious fruit was on its way.

Martha always wanted to wash the figs before the girls ate them, but Mama insisted they eat them fresh-picked, au naturelle, from the tree. Mama always won the argument.