Three weeks ago all the bananas available for purchase at our local supermarket where I tend to shop were raw green. Usually when such green bananas are put out they're interspersed with ripening bananas in various stages of pale yellow. This time there was no choice but the ultra-green ones, so I bought my usual number, two large bunches. Reasoning that at this time of year bananas tend to ripen fairly quickly. Past experience failed this time.

We begin each morning breaking the night-time fast with a banana for each of us, along with either an orange, melon slice, or, at this time of year when Ontario peaches are available in sweet and juicy abundance, sliced peaches. During that time when the bananas nudged themselves agonizingly slowly toward ripeness, we'd acquired other, ripe bananas. Today, those green bananas are finally beginning to ripen. But so slowly that I'll still have to buy ripe bananas today to take us through the week.

Peaches have passed the height of their season, and that's sad. We always look forward to being able to stock up on ripe Ontario peaches; their taste is incontestably superior to peaches we've eaten anywhere else, including the famed Georgia peaches. Having them as an alternate to citrus fruits or melons for our daily vitamin C intake has been a tasting sensation for us.

Last Friday I baked a luscious peach pie. On those occasions when we have melons for breakfast, we alternate with peaches for dinnertime dessert, sliced, unadorned, delectable. This morning I baked a peach-upside-down-cake. It won't be long, we know, before the peaches from Ontario are unavailable. Then only the imported, hard, tasteless and fragrance-less peaches will be available. Not worth the bother of adding to our grocery list.