In between watching the Olympics (such INSPIRATION!), I’m working on a new wiki (trying out my Sites wiki with Google), getting my computer off our home computer network (oh, joy!), plowing away at the home sewing (borrrring!), and attempting to keep cool in our late summer heat wave here in Bremerton (the cats are all wearing wet neck collars and sleeping by the fans).
My husband and I have also been trying to harvest a few figs.
Usually, the starlings get almost all of the figs, but this year, there have not been many starlings. And not many ripe figs either. My husband discovered the reason why when he went up a longer ladder, higher up into the fig tree branches. This is a HUGE fig tree, and the leaves are very wide, and the branches are tremendously leafy.
He found two adolescent raccoons sleeping off their midnight fig feast with a daytime nap on one of the branches.
We managed to get one big bowl of figs. They taste wonderful when they are just harvested IF they are harvested when they are really ripe, but they also don’t have a long shelf life once you pick them. I picked out the most squishy ones to eat right away, and put those into the icebox. The rest went downstairs into the cool basement to ripen a bit more down there.
When I went down to get the rest of the figs the next day to freeze them, Shasta, our black, male kitty was lying, proudly and possessively by the bowl. He meyowed a “look at me and praise me” meyow, but I was too hot to fuss with him. I took the bowl of figs upstairs, peeled them, put some lime juice over the pulp, and froze it. I’ll make fig bread later on with it.
Then Shasta started meyowing. Meyow, meyow, meyow! On a hot afternoon in a hot house with no air conditioning, this was beyond irritating, and I couldn’t get him to stop.
Meyow, meyow, meyow! No matter what I did, meyow, meyow, meyow! Shasta may be an all-black cat (almost), but he also is a huge part Siamese. And Siamese (Siam is the old word for Thailand) cats have the MOST whiny, raucous, irritating meyow.
Finally, after I petted him, Shasta settled down and went outside to wait for Doug to come home from painting a house.
When Doug came home and went downstairs into his computer room, he nearly stepped on two fine, fat figs neatly laid out on his lovely, new, wood floor.
The figs were very drippy. They had cat teeth bite marks in them, deep cat teeth bite marks. Shasta was very happy about this discovery, purring and rubbing and just so pleased that we had also discovered HIS figs!
Doug decided then to look for more figs. Just in case. He found two more large ones, also covered with cat teeth bite marks. Also very, very drippy. And squishy. Shasta pranced around, even more delighted that we were FINALLY appreciating HIS booty.
There is nothing more yucky looking than an over-ripe fig that is extra squishy. And extra drippy. With cat teeth bite marks on it. On a hot, dusty afternoon.
I was glad the rest of the figs were frozen. I really, REALLY couldn’t face eating any more figs. Not that day! Maybe not for a few weeks, either!
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