As a young child, I used to spend a lot of time at my grandmother’s house. In the large garden they had in their house, my grandparents had a large fig tree that spread its branches and leaves all over the garden. Maybe because I was young and small that I thought it was big, but it really was huge, and so where the figs that it produced. My job in the summer was to climb the thick branches and pick as many figs as possible, at times filling 3 to 4 bucketfulls, which my grandma would separate the good from the bad ones. Mind you, I’m talking about one bad one for every twenty juicy and plump figs. Very few were thrown away, and they were distributed to relatives and neighbors. And another bucketful would end up in my stomach while spreading my arms and limbs to get the ones at the far end of the branches. The only problem I had up there was what to do with the fig skins. Some of them I was able to throw over the wall into an adjacent field in the Ta’ Ġiorni neighborhood. A few others I threw on the soil underneath me, and the biggest amount I threw on a chicken coop, which was pretty high, and no one would notice them. That’s what I thought until my aunt saw these little black spots on the coop and wondered what they were. When my uncles checked them out, they found out what they were and the culprit was caught red-handed. But thankfully the fig skins had dried up and shrivelled up to almost nothing. On top of everything I never got sick from eating so many figs, and still consider them my favorite fruit along with strawberries and mango.
