Plantcestors
Barbie Hurtado:
“When I was a kid and we still lived in Mexico, before we migrated to the US, I remember going to my Abuelo’s house every Sunday, it was my favorite day. My mom and her 6 sisters would cook a big meal and my siblings and I would be outside playing with our cousins all day. My Abuelo had a lot of plants that he’d water and talk to, that’s how my mom inherited her knowledge and love of plants. My Abuelo Don Sigi, as the neighbors would call him, had the biggest, most beautiful árbol de higos (Fig Tree). It had the sweetest purple figs I have ever tasted, they were my mom’s favorite, and she still talks about these purple figs and it’s been over 30 years since she had one. Don Sigi would always save her some and they’d sit outside after lunch to enjoy them. When my parents bought our house, my Abuelo gave my mom a root of his tree and told her how to take care of it so she could grow one. That tree grew and gave us sweet higos on hot summer days.
When things got hard and we were forced to migrate my mom had to leave her dad, her sisters, and the fig tree she loved so much.
Today, at 60 years old my mom has a big green fig tree in the backyard of the house she bought and worked so hard to own. She waters it, talks to it the way she talks to all her other plants the same way her dad taught her and she argues with the birds who eat her figs. She cuts them just like her dad did and saves them for us to enjoy. She remembers that tree and my abuelo’s love every time she eats higos and I remember those hot summer days playing with my primos and eating the food my mom and tias would cook for us every Sunday at Don Sigi’s house.”