Free! Free! Free!

   This has been a bumper year for fruit. We don't have any trees of our own but neighbours and friends have been very generous with windfalls. The freezer is stacked with flat-packed plums, greengages and apple sauce. Our one little red currant bush produced an astonishing amount. And then there's all the free stuff quite literally lying around, free for the taking.
   Here's yesterday's haul. The walnuts came from a huge tree that hangs over the street opposite the school. Unless I'm quick, cars crunch the nuts into smithereens. The hazelnuts are from a piece of waste ground near our house, as are the quinces and windfall pears.
Can you make out the figs? I picked two kinds, the purple ones next to the place where we take our bags of rubbish, and the green ones from a tree hanging over the road on the way out of the village.
    Opposite, on another piece of waste ground, a plum tree has dropped kilos and kilos of purple fruit. It's all lying in the ditch waiting for me to go back with a bigger bag.

Mirepoix market yesterday

   Now that tourism season has died down, we've added a Monday visit to Mirepoix market back into our weekly routine. July and August, it's crammed and--unless you get there by 8:30 a.m. (and leave by 9:30 a.m.) it's no fun at all.
   But this week's was. Sun blazing, everyone enjoying café crème under the arcades, and cheerful orange things everywhere--pumpkins, carrots, Indian bedspreads...

   Another uplifting piece of news is that, thanks to public protest, Mirepoix will not be getting another supermarket anytime soon.