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Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Of Fights and Figs

 

This post appeared this month on The Stage of Life (scroll down til you see my smiling face) where I serve as Homeowner Editor.  Our recent move - and the hubster's stance on home ownership (under the fig tree with live ammunition)  has given me loads of material for the topic.

I paused in the doorway to admire the new rug, a beautiful name-brand made-of-expensive wool area rug that was almost as attractive as the basement-level price I paid for it at neighborhood consignment shop. It’s not that I’m cheap, but I was pinching pennies long before we found out Abraham Lincoln was a vampire hunter.

I grinned. “It’s beautiful.”

“I know.” Bill’s voice came from the kitchen. It’s nice when the man of the house notices the little touches you put in place to make a house a home.

“It just goes to show that if you’re willing to wait, you’ll eventually reach your goal.” I haunted this shop for months waiting for the right floor covering to go with my century-old hardwoods.

“Absolutely.”  Bill sounded distracted, but how long can a rug, even one with a dashing reindeer motif, hold the attention of a man who can open aspirin bottles without help.

I turned to see him staring dreamily out the kitchen window.

Just outside the window is the reason the Head of Household made this particular household his castle.  A beautiful, bountiful fig tree burst with gorgeous green leaves and a fresh array of fruit. There were hundreds of tender, young figs waiting through sun and moon, rainy days and sunny ones, for the perfect moment when a fast-moving mockingbird did a fast fly-by for breakfast.
 
The War of the Roses never got as bloodthirsty as the War of the Fig Tree, although Roses probably had more sophisticated weaponry.  The ground under the fig tree bore signs of sponges and scrub brushes that flew shy of their target.

Just then he threw the window open with one hand and drove the broom neatly through the center.

“Excuse me, but are you in training for the Olympics?  Is Broom Jousting the new Basketball?”

A noise drifted in through the window. It was kind of a cross between a chirp and a tweet, as if somewhere an ill-mannered early bird was trying to sing around a mouth full of worm.

Bill side-armed a brand new bar of Ivory soap out of the window and the birdie sounds halted abruptly.

The thing about owning a home is that you have to learn to take care of issues that crop up suddenly around the house.

That’s how we ended up with a front-yard village of bird feeders full of enticing and distracting treats, a twenty-foot net that could install discipline in Lady GaGa’s hairdo over the fig tree, and a happy husband whose soap slinging days are over.

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