A letter to our fig tree

I've tried. I really have.

You and I first met almost six decades ago with the fig tree in the front yard. Like most fig trees you were ignored, except when we kids climbed you or picked your fruit. You kept on fruiting nonetheless, year after year, no pruning, watering or spraying. And we kept on not eating your fruit.

It might have been different if Mum had been a jam maker. She did make good strawberry jam, from the vast cheap bins of 'overipes' in the Moreton Bay strawberry farms, but she never attempted fig jam. Maybe that was because the seeds got caught in Dad's false teeth – he lost them boxing for the Air Force in World War 2. More likely it was because she knew we wouldn't eat it.

It wasn't that we had a prejudice against backyard fruit. Most backyards back then had a fruit tree or three. We loved the mangos, endured the paw paws, Dad enjoyed the persimmons for breakfast and, eventually, I learned how to make jam from the loquats. Sometimes we'd sit in the branches and see how far we could spit the loquat seeds. But the figs were ignored, except by the birds.

The only way we ate figs was when they had been candied or crystallised. Grandma sent us a wooden box of crystallised fruits every Christmas, but even then every other fruit was eaten first. Finally my brother and I would get half the fig each, which we ate because it was sweet and sweet things were rare-ish back then and, after all, it was only half a fig once a year.

Sometime in my twenties figs became fashionable served with a slice of prosciutto, which I don't eat either. I even ate fig jam once or twice. It was okay. It's even better eaten with a sharp cheese, but sour cherry jam is better.

Even in the hungry years I didn't eat figs. Edible grass seeds ground into an oily flour; a hundred and ten ways with avocado; fried green tomatoes and I stir-fried pumpkin tendrils. But even though figs grew lavishly … no figs.

I tried. I planted black figs, brown figs, white figs; nibbled wild native sandpaper figs and Port Jackson figs; tried baking figs in port and spices – a delicious syrup, pity about the figs. Decades later we have a plenitude of figs from those trees, but only four friends who love them, three of whom have their own fig trees.

The fig lovers are all people of great discrimination. This means, dear figs, it obviously isn't you. It's me.

Hopefully there are readers out there who'll love you; who have a sunny but neglected spot in the backyard, by the shed maybe. You can throw the grass clippings under it, mixed with leaves and branches and corn stalks, so they don't compact. A good mulch is all a fig tree really needs and even then it will produce without it.

There is a wild fig tree down the road from us, never looked after in any way at all, and yet it still produces the most abundant crop possible, fat and sweet and irresistible, if you happen to have feathers. I've known chooks learn to fly just so they can get at figs.

Figs even do well in pots, though with the minimal soil resources in a pot you will need to water, mulch and give at least a yearly, slow-release fertiliser. I have to hand it to you, figs. You are the most generous, under-rated backyard fruit, perfect for a beginner fruit grower. If they like figs.

But you and me, figs? We were just destined never to be together.

Yours, respectfully,

Jackie

This week I am:

. watching amazed at the dahlias that have put on an entirely new display of blooms – all they wanted was some rain and warmth;

. doing the Japanese cherry blossom watching in reverse, gazing out at the maples turning from yellow-tinged green to butter yellow, all in the space of a single day;

.trying to pretend the limes are ripe enough to juice … they aren't;

. indulging in lemon verbena and ginger tea – the lemon verbena will be losing its leaves soon, which reminds me to pick the lemon grass, hang it in a bundle in a well-ventilated spot in the back hall, for herb teas through winter; and

.wishing I had planted ten rows of peas that would be just beginning to fruit now – bowls and bowls of fresh peas. Next autumn …