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Not a metaphor. I have a vine and a fig tree. Yes, it's because of the quote from Micah 4: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not take up sword against nation; they shall never again know war. But every person shall sit under his grapevine and fig tree with no one to disturb him." But in this case, "my vine is alive but my fig tree is dead" is literal.
But, yeah. It IS possible to grow a dwarf Turkish fig in climate Zone 4, which is where Boston is -- but you have to do it in a large pot and take it inside over the winter. And it still stresses it. I did well for a number of years, and even got the occasional fig from it, but it looks like it's just plain given up. I don't think there's any life in it at all. I tried some replanting stuff with it, and we'll see, but I think it's just plain gone. Hard to tell with plants sometimes.
Which brings me to the grapevine. The one which the incompetents who I paid to tidy up my yard last year cut down, because they seemed to think it was a weed.
It's thriving. I never got around to taking down the trellis over where the thing was, and I looked over, and the trellis was covered in a vine, so I went over to weed it -- and it was a grapevine. And it's TALLER than the trellis now. I have no idea when that happened. It seems to be sprouting up like a ... like a vine or something. I'm going to train it around the downspout of the gutter, and then see if I can't get it to take over the porch. Because grapevine.
It's a Concord grapevine, if I remember correctly, which means that it is SPECIFICALLY a Zone 4 grape.
But, yeah. It IS possible to grow a dwarf Turkish fig in climate Zone 4, which is where Boston is -- but you have to do it in a large pot and take it inside over the winter. And it still stresses it. I did well for a number of years, and even got the occasional fig from it, but it looks like it's just plain given up. I don't think there's any life in it at all. I tried some replanting stuff with it, and we'll see, but I think it's just plain gone. Hard to tell with plants sometimes.
Which brings me to the grapevine. The one which the incompetents who I paid to tidy up my yard last year cut down, because they seemed to think it was a weed.
It's thriving. I never got around to taking down the trellis over where the thing was, and I looked over, and the trellis was covered in a vine, so I went over to weed it -- and it was a grapevine. And it's TALLER than the trellis now. I have no idea when that happened. It seems to be sprouting up like a ... like a vine or something. I'm going to train it around the downspout of the gutter, and then see if I can't get it to take over the porch. Because grapevine.
It's a Concord grapevine, if I remember correctly, which means that it is SPECIFICALLY a Zone 4 grape.