"I'm tired of apples," my husband said. "See if they have any plums, peaches or nectarines." So I went to the grocery store, and they had 17 kinds of apples and one kind of quince. No plums, peaches or nectarines this time of year, apparently.

So I bought a quince. It is a lovely lemon yellow but quite hard. What do we do now? Wait for it to soften and become fragrant? Cut it up and eat it now? Cook it?

My only previous encounter with a quince was in Edward Lear's Nonsense Alphabet. I can't remember the verse about the quince, but I remember X:

X was once the great King Xerxes,
whom Papa much wished to know.
This he could not do, for Xerxes
died quite long ago.

(You have to put the accent on the second syllable of Papa.)