Sunday, January 30, 2011

Tree Tale

Before I start my story....
I have to say one thing about the new header.....
(blog talk for that picture of me at the top....yea I know....I am so high tech)
I NEVER MEANT FOR IT TO BE THAT BIG!
I am still learning so don't let it scare you whilst I figure it all out.
But back to my story
which isn't really a story but more of an amusing anecdote with a question for you.
We have a fig tree in our backyard.
 It came to us via a good friend I will call DH.
She is a woman of high energy and a green thumb.
And lucky for me she likes to move her plants around a lot and I have been the lucky beneficiary of her beautiful plant left overs.
The fig tree sat in her back yard for a few years and then dug up and offered to me.
If you have been following my little blog experiment you might remember that I have a brown thumb.
I usually don't invest much in the living things outside my house.
It just makes it sadder when it is time for them to be yanked out of the dirt.
But a free plant?
Hope springs eternal.
It was just barely bigger than the size of the back of the van with one of the bench seats removed  but with a few snips of the pruning shears we fit it in and brought it to it's new home.
We planted it by the back fence.
And by golly it grew,
and grew
and grew.

Despite my worst efforts it grew from about 4 feet to over 20.
A thing of beauty.
And the figs so plentiful and big that my tree is a favorite spot for all sorts of creatures.
And I fell in love with it.
A plant that was both beautiful and unstoppable even being in my backyard.
But that's not the story....
Every winter the tree loses it's figs and leaves and green glory.
All tall and bare and twiggy with only the promise of the huge green leaves returning in the spring
And yet I am still in love.
My backyard fence sharing neighbor not so much.
At least that's what I suspect.
I've never really asked.
She, unlike me, spends hours and hours in her backyard making sure it is all just so.
Mr. T trimmed the barren fig tree last week and one of it's branches fell over the fence into their backyard.
It was about 2 feet long and a couple of inches in diameter.
Mr. T ever the thoughtful neighbor was going to walk around the corner to their street after he was finished and ask to enter their yard to retrieve the stray branch.
Only problem is that by the time he had finished his chores he had forgotten all about it.
And would have probably never remembered until just the other day walked out
to the front yard and found
sitting where the trash cans are usually put.
One freshly cut fig tree branch about 2 feet long and a couple of inches in diameter.
Now of course we can't be sure....
But was that a message?

4 comments:

Cynthia said...

Oh, that's a message all right! Snort! I often forget things 'after' I finish a task. Hopefully she'll enjoy the fact that it's fully pruned and not hanging over the fence?

PS- I have a green thumb but figs don't grow here! LUCKY!

Lynn said...

Oh yeah, a message indeed. The old saying "Good fences make good neighbors" certainly seems to apply here, but I'm not sure even a good fence would do the trick.

Maybe some fresh baked brownies might help.

alpinekleins said...

ok ok ok . . . you win the prize for . . . the BEST header EVER!!!! Love it, please please please tell me how you did it!

Kristin

Victoria said...

Can we just talk about the header? I think it GREAT. Worthy of a Texas girl. GO BIG OR GO HOME.