Every man neath his vine and fig tree
Outside the door of my office, there on the tarmac are three great rubber tyres stacked one on another. They have been there for many years and they are filled with earth, and out of this earth there grows a flourishing fig tree. You didn't know fig trees flourished in these climes, or in only three tyres' worth of soil? Neither did I, but this one does. Its upper reaches are higher than the roof of the low building, which consists of the office and a community space.
Today one of the members came in to pay rent, and while I scribbled a receipt she poked her head out of the door and noticed that a few of the more inaccessible figs were ripe. We set about trying to pick them: she pulled a branch down to bring its tip within reach and I plucked the ripe fruit. We got a couple like this. Several that were more elusive remained, so she called for her 14-year-old son and sent him up onto the pitched roof for them. Probably not recommended child-rearing practice, but she has plenty so I suppose one or two are expendable. "So that's how you get up there," she said as he athletically hoisted himself up via a window-sill and a very sturdy eaves-level trellis. "I always wondered how you did it."
I came home with a huge, very ripe, purple and delicious-looking fig.
The trellis overhangs the other door, the one from the garden, and a vine grows up it. How right old Micah had it. They knew a thing or two, those prophets.
Today one of the members came in to pay rent, and while I scribbled a receipt she poked her head out of the door and noticed that a few of the more inaccessible figs were ripe. We set about trying to pick them: she pulled a branch down to bring its tip within reach and I plucked the ripe fruit. We got a couple like this. Several that were more elusive remained, so she called for her 14-year-old son and sent him up onto the pitched roof for them. Probably not recommended child-rearing practice, but she has plenty so I suppose one or two are expendable. "So that's how you get up there," she said as he athletically hoisted himself up via a window-sill and a very sturdy eaves-level trellis. "I always wondered how you did it."
I came home with a huge, very ripe, purple and delicious-looking fig.
The trellis overhangs the other door, the one from the garden, and a vine grows up it. How right old Micah had it. They knew a thing or two, those prophets.