In Season: Family Figs

Across the South in the summertime, generations-old fig trees burst with a bounty of soft, sweet fruit for the picking

Fresh figs are a fleeting summer delicacy; pick, buy, and eat your fill before they're gone. Shutterstock

My mother’s fig tree was a thing of wonder. 

The sprawling backyard ficus began as a cutting from a mature, prolific tree that grew in my great-aunt’s yard in Carencro, Louisiana. Aunt Flo’s fig tree reliably produced abundant crops of the sweetest, most delicious figs anyone could imagine. She gifted Mom with a well-nurtured offshoot, and everyone hoped for the best.