That’s what I’ve been doing today, picking figs off the tree by my father’s barn. I spent an hour there, sweating like the dickens, but I brought those beauties home. There must be 15 or 20 pounds of them, just from today’s harvest (see below for a view from my counter; notice how deep that box is). And there will be just as many tomorrow from that tree, and the day after that, and the day after that. It is a glorious tree. Think of the preserves and the chutneys! I know this is the second fig post this week, but boy, do they make me joyful. The smell of figs ripening on a tree is the smell of home to me. When I was very small, before I started kindergarten, my sister and I would stay with our grandmother while our mom worked. We would go with her into her backyard during fig season and help her pick them. She gathered them in a colander, or sometimes in her apron, and then went inside to cook them. The smell of the figs on the tree, and in Mullay’s kitchen, makes me think the world is as kindly and as tender as Mullay was.