I’ve been drooling over my baby figs for months now. My small fig tree is usually a great little producer. I get more than a dozen juicy fat black figs from my meter high tree. So, when the figs suddenly swelled and softened in the hot sun, my greedy fingers plucked the babies from the vine and rushed for the chilled white wine.
I ripped the first one open and was just about to take a bite. But something was horribly wrong. Every one of my figs were brown and wizened inside. If anyone knows what happened, please let me know. I suspect fruit flies. I’ll take my revenge on the flies next year, no holds barred.
Something else happened yesterday too. I was inside my vegetable cage harvesting yellow tomatoes when I felt something itch my leg. That’s not unusual for me. I’m a magnet for all forms of mosquitoes and biting insects. So I brushed my hand over my leg and carried on. But the tickle didn’t go away. I looked down and saw a giant black hairy Huntsman spider above my knee, heading for the leg opening of my shorts.It was a seriously yuk moment.
I do not have a spider phobia and I also know that Huntsmen are not poisonous but I draw the line at letting them crawl up the leg of my shorts. Why is everything in the country so large?
Photo by Tontan Travel, Flickr Creative Commons
Elizabeth Preston 
OMG. If I’d seen that crawling up my leg I’d have had a heart attack right there in the tomato patch. Hope you find the cause of your withered figs.
Ha ha. Everything is huge and hairy here in rural New South Wales. I’ll have to post some of my photos and show my American friends the size of the insects here. Thanks so much for stopping by and commenting.
Uh….we have spiders in Indiana, USA…but nothing like the size of that guy! YIKES!
I used to live in Ohio and one time I nearly picked up a black snake (I don’t know what kind it was). He had curled up with my black garden hose….when I went inside and told my husband, he laughed and followed me outside…when Hubby saw the size of it…he stopped laughing. We gently poked it with a long stick. When it slithered away, we found out it was over 5 feet long…I doubt it was poisonous…but I’m not a fan of big snakes.
Enjoy the tomatoes!
Poking it with a stick was brave. I would have gone inside and rung the snake man. Our black snakes are timed so they run away, but later they come back again because snakes are territorial. Ours are poisonous and kill cats and dogs. The only good snakes are the ones that come out of a packet and are made of jelly 🙂