CityView Magazine

20 | October 2018 Y A Delicious Touch of Home BY CATHERINE PRITCHARD | PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATTHEW WONDERLY F O O D Y ears ago, a visitor brought John and Kay Poulos a gi – a bit of root from a fig tree in the Greek village where John was born. ey planted the root in their back yard and it sprouted into a large healthy tree. Decades later, the tree continues to thrive and produce delicious green-skinned figs that typically ripen in August. Nearby is another, much younger tree which produces red-skinned figs that typically ripen in early summer. e two trees provide tasty snacks all summer long. e same thing happens in yards around the area. Some belong to families with no connection to Greece or other Mediterranean nations where fig trees are common. But many belong to or were originally planted by Greeks who emigrated to this country and who wanted to have a taste of home in their yard. Back in the '60s and '70s, it seemed that just about every Greek family around had at least one fig tree in their yard, said Amphitrite Manuel, who moved to Fayetteville in 1961 with her husband, Chrysostom. He was the priest at Sts. Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church in Fay- etteville and Amphitrite, who taught at the church's Greek School, regularly visited the homes of parishioners. Inge Hondros, a native of northern Germany, had never seen figs until she married the son of Greek emigrés and moved into the home on Oakridge Avenue where they'd planted several fig trees in the late '40s or early '50s. "ey were really established," she said of the trees. "What they'd stuck in the ground had grown like weeds." e trees produced different types of figs with different ripening times throughout the summer. All were sweet and delicious, remembered Hondros, who no longer lives in that

• Cover