One Tree Courtyard

Blanot, France | 2018

Collaboration Andrew Todd and Bridget O’Rourke

Trees (1) Ficus carica

Credits Andrew Todd, Bridget O’Rourke, Martin Argyroglo

A single fig tree commands a small stone courtyard in rural Burgundy.

When she gives forth, it’s all at once, plethoric. Gorging on fresh fruit for days, we run out of steam after the second batch of chutney and jam. There being five fig trees in the village, hardly anyone else wants the bounty either.

Then, every February, I have the fraught task of pruning, an exercise in four-dimensional divination, after the last hard frost, final form unfolding according to climate and the energy levels of the tree in springtime. The pruning produces a set of antlers, as if there had been a tree-rut. Left to her own devices, she would swell and take over the house.

Our shared life is a (slow) conversation, a negotiation, a dance, an origin renewed every year. (Andrew Todd, in the book, 30 Trees, about this fig tree.)