Gifts

Over the last week we've been given two melons, varieties grown specially for jam-making, and a pumpkin. We could have had more, but we told our friends these were enough for us. I can't compete with Annie's fruity blips, but here are the pumpkin and one of the melons. We're storing them on the stairs because it's cooler there for them.

The pumpkin will be delicious, roasted, puréed, made into soup - so many ways of eating them. The pastèque melons, as they are called here - confusingly the same word is used for lovely summer watermelons - are tasteless and the idea is that you add flavours of citrus fruit or spices to make jam. A strange idea, especially since we have made more really tasty jam from other fruits than we can manage to eat, but it's difficult to say no to generous gardeners here.