Posted by Loulou on Aug 26, 2014 | 0 comments

A fig can go ANYWHERE when it pleases…just like kitties.

Well, I thought mama had more scruples than this! Every year at this time when she takes her favorite walk up into the vineyards, she takes a little plastic box with a lid. Well, a not so little box, actually, because this is blackberry season and if the tourists have decided that take-out is easier than foraging, mama is thrilled. No one seems to want to pick berries anymore, she says, or…heh, heh…magnificent yellow figs that hang like Christmas ornaments on a tree near the top of the path next to the vineyards.

Okay, okay, some vineyards have signs that say “Privé” and some don’t…

Mama picks the don’t ones, haha.

But, she says, there is never anyone there and for years and the trees she loves pop out figs and they fall on the ground and rot and it’s a cryin’ shame and so I just help out Nature by cleaning up under the tree, with an occasional pluck here and there. I don’t like to see food go to waste, mama says. And off she goes.

Just be sure you wear long sleeves, mama….Unlike me, those SCRATCH!

Our neighbor, the one who just gave mama two HUGE onions called Rose de Toulouges that weigh a kilo each, the same ones she grilled last night on the barbeque, loves the figs mama finds on yet another property. They are black figs which are soft and lovely when they are ripe, and then their little stems bend over and so the figs are called Cou de cygne as in “the neck of the swan”—and so she’s going to find those for the neighbors because they give her so much to eat out of their garden. You can certainly live off the fat of the land here, just like in “Of Mice and Men.” Not that I’m going to check out THAT book anytime soon!

So as it turns out, the blackberries are fat and ready and the figs sparse but like candy and even though I’m not a fig fan, I can appreciate that mama and papa have anthro tastes and while they are spearing thin slices of Spanish ham to go with their figs, maybe they’ll throw their spears a little more in my direction.

And as for guilt—well, mama doesn’t have a lot of that where wild figs and berries are concerned. But she’d better have a good dose of it if she fortgets that I’M WAITING HERE FOR MY DINNER WHILE YOU GUYS EAT FORBIDDEN FIGS!!!