Absence and presence

I expect you have all heard of the old woman who lived in a shoe – she had so many children that she didn’t know what to do. Well, it seems that the gap left in my life by absent children is being filled up with courgettes. Yes, courgettes (or zucchini for those of other nations).

Here is this morning’s harvest – along with some dinky little cucumbers. Those round greeny-white things are cucumbers – I don’t know their name because I was given the plants. I think that they might be Australian in origin, but wherever they hail from, they taste delicious.



You might think that that is a modest and manageable harvest, but these jaunty little fellows are not alone – they are merely the tip of a great green and yellow iceberg. We have been eating courgettes every day. And we have frozen some as courgettes in tomato sauce. And we have tried to give some to friends. But, unfortunately, in the midst of an apparent national courgette surplus, there aren’t always willing takers.

This is the backlog (seemingly poised to take over the world as we know it).


And these are the ones that got away, hiding surreptitiously under leaves, and fattening themselves towards marrowdom.


So if you find yourself travelling along a quiet country lane and see a sign saying ‘Courgettes for sale’, please do stop and buy some. You could make an old woman very happy.