Flesh of a Fig

Not quite saggy sweet,
though the one on the top right is beginning to wrinkle.

When the door bell rings, I don't always answer.  Today I peeked from the office and saw Tony's reflection in the glass of a wall photo.  Safe.  And sweet!  Tony's my darling Italian neighbor who knows I go crazy over Italian Prunes, Italian Parsley, Italian Cucumbers, and the figs this fellow grows in his back yard.

Today he had shuffled across the street with a generous bowl of figs, this time from his brother's trees.  He blushed when I told him to give his brother a hug and a kiss for me.

Extravagant and exquisite

The fig flesh in this picture still lingers in my mouth, the memory fresh and nearly obscene in it's pleasure, proof that the Great Creator of All takes pleasure in our pleasure.  Lovely to be surprised by the Things I get to do today--bask in the splendor of a honey-dripping, saggy-fleshed fig.

A Triangle of Onions

I seldom do what most folks do.  Grew taller than most women (6' 1")--that set the bar right off--which was really out of my control, but gave me the foundational premise from which to work.  Admitting right up front here, however, that it took me at least 40 years to ease out of the need to conform, to slide into the joy of being myself, to expand a bit more every day into possibilities.

Waiting for imagination to strike--to be planted soon

Wow!  What that has to do with onions is yet to be revealed.  My bag of 80 onion sets has been waiting on the kitchen counter for a month nearly. They were white onions.  I was waiting until a convenient trip out to buy sets for yellow onions.  Done.  The bags (3 all together=240 onion sets) have sprouting slowly into the Things I get to do today for at least two weeks as other things pushed to the fore. Daily promises to the three-bags-full were broken.  But today I got a firm grip on my determination, and though it was time for a dinner I had not yet prepared, I planted onions.*

Triangle of onions

Contrary to the instructions on the bag, designed to keep all of us in conformity and an ordinary state (boring, same-old-same-old, mundane, unimaginative, uninspired, dull), I planted the onions in my flower bed, and not in rows, either.  I thought waves would be nice. I planted two two-row waves.  And then I planted a triangle--between the larkspur and the peony.  They told me they would be happy there.  I believe them.




*After sharing with neighbors and friends and planting a few to fulfill my promise, there are plenty left to tuck here and there about the yard in the sunny spots.  Just too fun for words.

Italian Generosity

Tony just gave it to me--a mound of parsley seed so generous that it spilled over the edge of my outstretched hand. My neighbors are the best.  Hand-picked, every one of them, for their unique qualities and contributions to my life--this time in the form of never-ending Italian (flat leaf) parsley.

I planted two types of parsley this last spring.  Each seed was blessed and coddled and watered and stroked and loved and tended and watched until it grew big enough to live on its own outside.  And when the summer was done, my Italian parsley was slender and sparse.  Disappointment was the flavor of all those efforts.  And as I think about it, the planting and tending process was very much from my Norse heritage and not my Italian side.  Truth be known, genetically I don't have an Italian side, and I think I was just too stiff.  They don't do it that way.

Old pot with dirt and parsley seeds.  Even the rooting around
of a pesky squirrel did not derail the process.

So Tony told me how to plant my spilling-over gift so that I would have parsley forever: find a big, old pot with dirt; throw the seeds in the pot; scratch the dirt a little bit; keep it moist.  That's it.  I'll need to do that again next spring or summer.  The plants will grow.  They will reseed on their own the second year (that's why I'm supposed to do it for them the first summer) and the cycle will just keep going.  Parsley forever.



If all the Things I get to do today were flavored with "lighten up," "let go," "ease," "flow," "throw it in the pot, scratch it and keep it moist," how easily would life spring forth and grow with abundance--forever.

Lush, large, Italian Generosity