"It was the best present we got for a long time," he said. "And we're still living on it." Apparently, young relatives, off on holiday to France, gave them the key of the house and told them to use all the fruit and any vegetables they wanted, rather than see them go to loss. So, the first haul included two boxes of plums, fine Victorias, a huge helping of raspberries - they had a late fruiting variety as well as the usual type; apples, some just coming into ripeness, crabapples ditto and quinces. The vegetables included courgettes, French beans and broad beans.
The quinces, of course, don't ripen until about the end of October. Nevertheless the gift kept not one but two houses well topped up in uncontaminated, unsprayed, lovingly brought-up fruit and vegetables. Don't laugh: there's a difference between a merely efficiently-tended garden and a lovingly attended garden. It shows. And it tastes. No difficulty in dealing with the raspberries - must find out the variety, they looked like loganberries.
A word about quinces. An article in an English magazine tells us that "quinces are a relatively common tree round British orchards and gardens, but I imagine a high percentage of fruit is wasted as windfall." A pity, the writer says, because they can be used to liven up an apple tart. But, of course, quince flesh is as hard as hell. Not until late in the year, when well stored, does it become softer. It makes an original liqueur which is closely guarded in at least one house. Worth the labour.
Back to the bounty of our recent travellers. It is not a big garden, but one which they have filled with a rich variety of still uncrowded fruit and vegetables - and yet leave some room for relaxation. Nothing, but nothing, can equal your own produce, as half a dozen people wholeheartedly invited to use each item as it grew and ripened, can acknowledge. Just now the largess of plums is the question.
Fortunately Jane Grigson's Fruit Book (Penguin Food/ Cooking) has many answers. None of your Fruit Salads for her: you need the recipe for Le Grand Dessert: Fruits and ices. For fruit, she reminds us, was our primitive and most excellent as well as most innocent food when it grew in Paradise... Even in its fallen state (after that apple Eve extended to Adam), fruit is still the most agreeable closure to a meal, however grand and princely. In other words: aim at recovering the original flavour of Eden even if such transcendent perfection can never quite be achieved.