overgrown
July 28, 2013
the fig-trees have taken over
The shot is from the porch on the second floor. On the right is the edge of the new fence and my neighbor’s garage wall that I hang all the reliefs and ornaments on. In front of the wall is the base of the Frank Lloyd Wright Sprite statue. The left of the image is the older fig-tree.
Back in January, the back-yard was a mound of frozen mud – the big dig4 – covered in a blue plastic tarp. Today, it’s totally green and overgrown with fig-trees, Japanese lilac, Cedar, Wind-swept Pine and pots and pots of flowers. Let’s not forget the four pots of eggplant. And let’s not forget the fact that for the last four weeks I’ve been trimming and pruning. The fig-trees got the most branches removed, followed by the Cedar. With the Cedar, I keep removing the lower branches so that all you see, at back-yard level, is the straight red trunk.
I think what surprises me most is the canopy. I’ve been nursing the two fig-trees for years and this summer not only did I get a bumper crop, but the two trees have taken over creating an amazing leaf-cover. No one looking at the image would think it’s an urban garden, on Pittsburgh’s North Side or that the canopy is from a cutting from a fig-tree in Calabria.