Union Square Farmers' Market in October

Above - the season: Concord grapes, the last raspberries, apple cider.

Rainbow chiles. Beautiful things.

And then I saw these: quinces. I smell them as I write, from the bowl beside my computer.

They stopped me in my tracks. I went to the market to look for flowers for the front of our offices, but I came back with a bag of quinces. I paused a week ago at Pacific Gourmet on Court Street to sniff some quinces and they smelled, sacrilegiously, of nothing. I put them back. These, picked yesterday, smelled like lemons and apples and honey.

If you have a farmers' market near you find quinces and buy enough to fill a bowl. After a few weeks you can eat them, or right now for that matter, but put the bowl where their scent will be noticed, in the bedroom, or where you sit and read, or write.