fig season & mother’s little helper

It’s fig season in our backyard. Brown Turkey Figs. The trick is to pick them when they’re ripe, but before the birds or squirrels find out that they’re ripe.

(Hey, that shape is oddly familiar.)

Actually I should say “squirrel” singular, since I’m pretty sure we just have the one. And he’s not getting as many figs as he used to. (Yes, I’m also pretty sure he’s a him.) Our cat Bambino seems to be taking care of that.

Bambino doesn’t hurt the squirrel. He just chases him. A lot. I think the squirrel likes it; I think he even taunts Bambino. Now that my office is in the sunroom, I have a front-row seat to their backyard antics.

It’s pretty hard to photograph a fig, because as soon as you have one in your hand, you want to eat it.

Other people will post fig recipes this time of year. Good recipes. Either we need more fig trees, or I’m just a fig-a-holic because I can’t see us accumulating enough figs to put them into something else. If we ever do get sick of them, there’s always the neighbors, who have been quite nice up to now about receiving pounds and pounds of output from our hyper-producing fruit trees: plums and apples. But so far, the fig tree has never crossed that line, from our fig-lovin’ point of view.

And while I’m taking photos…

May I introduce:

Mother’s Little Helper

At the risk of sounding like a television ad, I will go ahead and say that the “Humanscale Foot Machine (FM300B)” is saving my back and feet during this last trimester of pregnancy and no doubt will make a lovely nursing stool when the time comes. It’s a pricey little bugger, but given what we’re spending on all the other gear for the coming of our little bugger, it’s pretty much in line. And mommy needs a little something-something for all this hard gestation work she’s doing, no? The best part is the massager thingy in the middle, however using that does require one to work barefoot.