Ciao Angela, my favorite fig memory was growing up in Italy. We had a large fig orchard, mostly Paradiso. My father was tying up the tree real hard and it snapped and hit him in the nose. My family, especially his mammma blammed his big nose on the paradiso that smacked him in the nose. I as his daughter always worried about acquiring my father" big nose " he told me don't worry, a fig has to punch you to get a nose like mine, Abbraccio forte mio Bambina" I will never forget that. I loved fig trees ever since my Papa fought with the Paradiso from Castel Frentano!!!!! Ciao, Maggie

Dogs (real-canines) may love and eat too many figs
and then fart like crazy!

Received my first fig plant from an elderly Italian gentlemen in Pittsburgh PA in the early 70's.

When I was about 7 or 8 years old, my mom had a little fig tree in our back yard and being the little mischevious boy I was, It was destined to be attacked. Somehow(i don't remember how), I broke the fig about 2" off the ground. Now over 10 years later, the fig tree is thriving with a 90 degree elbow at the bottom. That fig tree is one heck of a fighter!
Brian

A few years ago we ate at a restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina named "FIG". Did they cook a lot of figs, did they have a special favorite fig dish? No. "FIG" stands for "food is good". Appropriate don't you think?

Cath

Many years ago I was visiting my Aunt and she had a beautiful fig tree with huge ripe fruits just waiting! When I asked if I could pick some for a recipe she told me to help myself. Well I got very excited because I usually eat 1 to every 3 figs picked...anyway, I started picking an eating...within about 5mins. I reached up and saw the black coil of a SNAKE! I nearly stroked out! When I returned to the house so soon, my Aunt asked why I was back. I told her she had a snake up in her tree... She had a good laugh and said, yeah she hangs them in there to keep the birds from stealing her fruit! THANKS FOR TELLIN ME BEFOREHAND!

Favorite fig memory was eating figs off the tree grandma grew inground in back yard as we would go out there pick figs and walk in her garden.
I remember getting bit good by the mosquitos and coming in the house scratching and she would rub olive oil on the bite and say it stops the scratching, i believed and it did. Years later i did same with my children when they were little and it worked till they were a little older and then they new.
Most favorite fig memory was several years back when lots of figs were getting ripe each day and the yellow jackets were having a feast one morning, i got the hose and started spraying them off the trees and Almost getting stung here and there as they did not like the spray, most would fall to the ground some fly at me.
That season i learned the bee 2 step , first stamp left foot then follow with right to make sure.
Following year i put up some bee traps in the pussywillow tree and that solved most of the problem , i cut tree down this past winter when we had a good ice storm and tree split several ways .
So now i know 1 dance the Bee 2 step!
Martin

Here is an other (not so funny story -
that actually turns into a sad one.

Approx. 4-5 years ago, while inspecting my figs in
daylight, I consistently got an itch (wearing shorts,
mostly on my legs). My first impression was "oh-crap",
I am getting allergic to them fig latex, just by walking
past them! That went for all that year. Next year, same
stuff; BUT one day I noticed one (or more) litte BLACK
bugger on my legs. It turned out to be a NEWLY USA
introduced Asian mosquito. This is way worse than the
"normal" grey ones we are accustumed too, that attack
after dusk. These Asian bugs are very aggressive and
attack in daylight - even in high bright noon! Doing some
reseach, I learned that they were first introduced
up-north (Maine?) inside used car tires for re-cycling.
These bugs lay eggs at the edge of a water level. Next
rainfall, as the water level rises and with right
temperature they hatch. Even a discarded tuna can is
enoughg for them. They (eggs) do survive winter for next
spring/summer. I did call my town "health" official about
it. All I got was, oh yeah, I have read about this...
Probably I did get a "misting" of insecticide from the
town in my neighbeorhood - useless! I also went ~4 house
backyards collecting discarted containers.

Today, I had my first 2009 attack!
The species I have encountered, has white-stripes,
known as TIGER mosquito...

Before all this, both my wife and daughter, used to sun
bath on a deck chair on the grass in the back yard.
I bet, no more, else these mosquitoes will bite both their
asses off! May as well throw the chirs out.

Sooo; beware! If it is not there yet - it coming to you soon.
No snake-oil here...

Gorgi ,
be careful, the Culex mosquito is a vector for west nile virus and en
Last year 1 person died from it i believe from our county and 25 deaths in illinois.
There are over 2500 different species of mosquitoes throughout the world, of which 150 species occur in the United States.
A single female can lay over 200 eggs at a time. Mosquito eggs can survive for more than five years.
All mosquitoes need water to complete their life cycle.
Not all species bite humans; some prefer birds, others prefer horses, and some will even bite frogs and turtles.
Only females take blood; males feed only on plant nectar.
Mosquitoes can fly considerable distances; some species remain close to their larval habitats while others can fly 20 miles or more.
Mosquitoes do not develop in grass or shrubbery, although adults fequently rest in these areas during daylight hours.
Mosquitoes are responsible for more human death than any other living creature.
They need to sterilize the whole family of them i see no use for them in the big scheme of things.
Martin

Martin,
A good weapon against mosquitoes are bats!
They love to eat a lot of them...

I bought the wood material to build a bat-house last
winter, but because my little table-saw was buried
in the back of my garage, behind tons of fig pots,
I did not manage to built it.

I plan that next year (before April), I'll have it built
and installed, and hope that some bats take residence.

Unfortunately, I also hear that our native bats are
under severe trouble because of some kind of a fungus.

In the 1950's, my family lived downstairs in my Godfather's house in Brooklyn, New York. He came over from Italy around 1900.He grew a fig tree (black) in the backyard and by the I was 5 years old, in 1955, the tree was huge. He built a sort of greenhouse around it with old glass windows to protect it fron the harsh New York winters. He also built a large grape arbor next to the tree and grew concord grapes. He had a wheel press in the basement and every year he would make his own concord grape wine. Anyway, he would wrap many of the lower growing figs with cheese cloth . He said it was to protect it from the birds. My father said it was to protect it from us.Me and my Dad loved figs. Problem was that my Godfather would not let anyone pick any figs from that tree. God help anyone that would dare to pluck a fruit from those hallowed limbs. He would come home every day from work and go straight to that fig tree and inspect every inch of it. If he found a fig was missing (and that did happen on ocassion when my Dad could not contain his desire to eat one of the sacred fruits) he would go into a cursing fit in Italian that would last for 15 minutes.Now, some 50 + years later, I live in California and have several fig trees and every day, when I come home from work, I go straight to my nursery and inspect each fig tree for whatever reason it is that we feel compelled to inspect our fig trees for. I also have an arbor next to my nursery filled with Concord grapes.

When I was a kid, I would go to Virginia with my mom for the months of July and August each year. We lived in NJ at that time. I was an infant the first time I went for a visit and went each year after that. My grandparents had two large fig trees in their back yard and they were against a high board fence where it formed the right back corner of the yard. They were large, brown figs. No special care was given them and they grew just fine over the years. When I was tiny, my grandmother would sit at the small table under the one window in the kitchen and peel the figs and put them into a bowl. As fast as she would be peeling them, I would be reaching up over the edge of the table and taking the peeled figs and eating them. I was never scolded for that--Such a sweet, patient grandma, she was. They laughed at the number of figs such a tiny girl could eat. We would go out and pluck them right from the trees when I was a little older. We would split open the fig skins and eat the pulp off the insides of them and toss the skins away. They were so good and sweet.

One person recently said she thinks they may have been Brown Turkey figs because they were evidently cold-hardy, growing with no real care in Newport News, VA, which is on the DelMarVa Peninsula.

I now live in Lafayette, LA and have two trees that I think are Celestes, but not sure. One tree came from a friend who went to the property where she lived as a child. They had a big fig tree there where several funny stories of hers came from. The house is gone now, but the big tree is still on the vacant lot. Several years ago, she went to visit the tree and dug up several suckers and took them home. She gave me one and I've named it, Legacy. It's a tough little tree.

The other, I got when I went to a craft show here. I was buying some fig preserves and saw a little fig tree in a pot and asked if the man was selling fig trees because my first tree had to be dug up when we built a workshop out back and I missed it so much. He said he wasn't selling trees, that he had brought that one to Lafayette to give to someone, but the person never showed up and I could have it. When I asked him how much it was, he said to just take it. That would keep him from having to cart it back to North Louisiana with them. I've named that one, Lagniappe, which means, "The gift," or, "A little something extra." (Has anyone else ever named their fig trees?)

Whenever my figs ripen, I go out back and pick some and when I'm savoring them, I think back to the wonderful times in VA, with my mom's family. Sometimes, I just go out and like to smell the leaves--They have such a special scent to them--Takes me right back to my visits in VA, as well.

In the mid 60s my father sold the little farm house he had built with his own hands on a few acres in a little town in the Italian Alps and moved our family to the city so my older brother could go on with school. The construction company where he worked for many years had a lot that had been a garden and in the lot was a shed where the construction tools were kept. My father kept an eye on the tool shed for his boss and in return he could use the lot. He planted a large vegetable garden, and pruned the long abandoned fruit trees. That summer he brought home big beautiful black figs. I gorged on them! Eventually he retired, but still kept an eye on the shed and his grandchildren delighted in the bounty of the fig tree and of the other fruit trees. In 1990 he went to be with the Lord; the garden passed to other hands. Apparently you can take the farmer (and the farmer's children) out of the land but not the land out of the farmer. My brother with the Phd spends his free time roaming the farming country side; my sister, also a Phd, on her large 5th story condo balcony grows grapevines and dwarf fruit trees. I ended up in Las Vegas. In the garden grows a persimmon, an apple, and a lovely Mission Fig tree. I picked a dozen figs this morning. This afternoon my grand kids will gorge on them.

One of my favorite childhood memories is of figs. My grandfather had about 10 fig trees at his home in Austin, Texas in 1950's. When we visited in the summer, we would watch him pick the figs each morning. We would have the figs for breakfast with cream my grandmother made. The extra figs would go out to a bench by the road to be were purchased on the honor system by neighbors and passersby.
Later, my sisters and I would play in the cool, sweet shade of the figs. The memory of those figs has stayed with me all those years.

In 1995, I planted a fig tree at my own house in Texas and then we were transferred. We rented the house and the fig tree was unattended for 11 years. We recently retired and moved back into the house. The tree is producing figs and every day I check it. We will have our first figs from that tree this year and I'm very much looking forward to figs with cream.

Thank you so much for asking Angela, I enjoy reading everyone's memories.

My neighbor is not a gardener by any stretch of the imagination. SHe doesn't care for it and sees it as just more work. However she was admiring my garden and my figs. I had a plant next to it and she asked what it was. I told her it was a newton plant so I could make fig newtons. For a half second she believed me.