We’ve been dry for a while, and we’re headed into July and August when we have more heat and less water.
Jane set my fig bush out yesterday: it’s liking the weather: so are all our new and transplanted trees, except the Harry Lauder’s Walkingstick isn’t looking so great. We might lose it, but it hasn’t produced the effect we hoped.
The little fig has been a hoot. It only cost me 5.00 and when it came I despaired of it: two mangy leaves and no change at all after being set under growlight for a couple of months…
Then it woke up and grew leaves, five big ones. And then it bloomed—which for a fig, since figs ARE the blooms—means it has three little figs on it. It’s only half a foot high.
So now it’s in the garden. Allegedly these can survive a Spokane winter quite handily. It’s a Chicago Fig. And I am inordinately fond of figs. If ever we can get a single edible fruit off this plant, I’ll have been entertained.
Its growth potential, however, is a bush as high as my head, with huge leaves, and a lot of fruit. I wouldn’t object. The leaves are pretty and only my waistline would suffer.
Don’t worry, it’ll pass. Just showers this side, but unusually heavy ifn you’re under the right cloud!
I hope your climate is gentle enough to keep it happy. All the figs of my acquaintance are semi-tropical at the least and don’t react well to more than a dusting of snow, or temperatures consistently below the 50s. Figs are yummy, our elderly neighbor used to let me pick from her tree. I should plant a fig, if I can find a good place for it. And the avocado tree is bearing, for the first time since we moved here.
We have a fig that is very, um, energetic, but I think we’re a good bit more temperate than you.
Figs are yummy. I saw some at the store today and had a heart attack when I saw the price for a measly 5 figs (I counted). My cousin in Western Australia has a lucious one in his back yard although it’s a continual battle to keep the birds, particularly the parrots, off the fruit.
I looked up Harry Lauder’s Walkingstick, because I know Sir Harry Lauder’s songs very well from my father’s old music hall records.
He was a very successful Scottish comedian and singer of the early 20th century. Obviously, one of his trademarks was a humorously twisted walking stick.
Here’s the song he was most famous for – a serious, rather than a comic, song:
Keep Right On To The End Of The Road
My Harry Lauder took two or three years to get up a head of steam. Then it put up a couple of *straight* shoots which a cut off, assuming that they were a reversion to the original type of filbert. The next year same thing, except due to life stuff I didn’t get the snippers out until midsummer. Then noticed that the contortions were starting. The ‘bush’ is now 15 feet high and climbing.
Not a foreground shrub, but I adore it. And the prunings are very decorative.