to the very marrow

After a couple of weeks of it sitting proudly in the fridge Nicky reluctantly removed and killed her allotment-grown small-head-sized courgette today and used its insides to make soup. As far as these things go it wasn't particularly massive but I think it and its companion rather surprised Nicky and her co-allotmentee when they discovered them sitting fatly upon the ground last month after forgetting that they'd planted them and that they don't feel so compelled about conforming to the "ideal" of the ultra-slim supermarket shape when grown in the wild. The mere fact that she can lift it attests to its relatively small size in the world of giant vegetables seeing as the world's largest took two men to lift but its relative vastness compared to shop-bought product was undeniable. It seems to be one of those things which (besides nice allotment-grown onions hanging next to the saucepans and hard-to-chop home-grown garlic on the worktop and a small envelope of the proceeds of the sale to colleagues of excess rhubarb on the table) makes the whole process nice and rewarding.