Since so many of you (I am stunned) have requested starts from my fig trees, I thought I would write here where and how I got them. Both of their beginnings are somehow cloaked in mystery, but that's part of the story. My grandmother, Lucia Melino Fressola, from Sant'Agata di Puglia told a lot of stories about figs, including the one about how on her first visit back to Foggia at the age of 50, her uncle walked all day to get her some late figs because it was off season.

She had a black fig tree in her back yard in Newark, and she kept it pruned and wrapped it every winter. I asked her where she got that fig, she said an Italian man gave it to her. Since everyone we knew in those days that was Italian was either from the south of Italy or Sicily, I am going to assume that this fig came from Southern Italy.

In 1981 I had my second child. My grandmother came out to see us and my new little boy. All the way from New Jersey on the airplane she had hand carried a fig start from that tree, not like you guys do, but in a shopping bag filled with dirt.

With a 2 year old and a newborn infant, the last thing I could bear to think about was a plant, so my husband dutifully stuck it in the ground behind a rhododendron. And that was the last we thought of it, until the following summer when she called me, "howÂs your fig?" "uh, fig? oh yeah!" So I went out to where my husband had said heÂd stuck it, and to my surprise, it had leaves! It had survived!

So we moved it to a sunny spot, and when we moved from that house a few years later, we took the fig. It hates the Seattle climate, unlike my grandmother, we never wrap it; so it freezes back periodically; although I am going to try to prune it better from now on. About once every six years we get a great harvest, the figs have wonderful flavor and make good jam too. My family is spread all over the place, so I have mailed fig starts to many of my grandmotherÂs descendants, some more than once. When she got very old, she moved out here and we always gave her the first and the last figs which she enjoyed until the very end.

I sent some starts a few years ago to Adriano who now calls them Nonnie's figs in honor of my grandmother.

My green fig; which I have called the Italian Honey Fig, was found in my neighborhood, which used to be called "Garlic Gulch" because of all the Italians that had lived there. The neighbor lady let me take a couple of starts off it. It is very happy in our mild Seattle Climate and bears fruit that can get huge. Is it really from Italy? I have no idea. Is it good? Oh yes!