The weather down here over the last few days has been the most blissful I can remember in the fifteen years of having this house. Not only is it the time of year when fecundity breeds gluttony, it is also a time of cool breezes to take the edge off potentially blistering sun. It might be called, perhaps the “No sweat” time. It’s a time for the skin to turn from ruddy to dark brown.

But most of all, it’s the time of fruit turning from green to ripe.

What can I say? The prunes are roughly two days from being perfect to eat raw, or to bung in with caramelised onions and breast of duck. A few days after that, they’re only good for drying in an oven – or jam. Very nice jam mind you, but not as good as the sensation of eating what are effectively wild plums.

Having tried a couple of Mirabelles, and I find the skins very chewy. The same’s true of the tomatoes: it’s obviously the very dry growing time we’ve had this year. But the greengages are classic: juicy and sweet without any cloying. They too will make excellent jam, of which my elder daughter is a tertiary addict.

The damsons simply haven’t happened. Either a bug has killed them off – or the arid weather, or too wet a Spring: I don’t know enough to say which. But most years here, they’re in short supply. This is the last thing that can be said of the quinces, which I suspect would thrive through three nuclear winters on the trot. I once thought of writing a book entitled 101 things you can do with Quinces. But I ran out of ideas after Number Eleven. And Number Eleven was “Use them as cricket balls”. That might sound desperate until you realise that Number Ten was “Use them as skyscraper foundations”.

But it’s looking like a good year for pears. Both the trees I have are full of them, and the two varieties are very different. Maybe the weather has been kind to deciduous fruit as a whole, because the two apple trees – one a cooker, one an eater – are also heaving with yellow-orange-red balls of fire. I’ve no idea why this is, but some years the eating apples here (russets, so they must have been imported) can be a spectacular explosion of moelleux fruit, or far too reminiscent of sawdust mixed with castor oil. In a week or so I’ll be able to tell you which: however, the trial is either one of imbibing ambrosia or spitting out horse-straw. There never seems to be any place in between.

In this hot, dry but welcoming climate, the grass – mercifully – stops growing. Such is a gift from Heaven, because the tractor mower has not been a Good Boy this year. Thomas the Tank Engine (he is affectionately named after the World War II fighter ace who left us a legacy) has done nothing but play up since April. Last week, the garage delivered him back with the promise that he was cured. But he is coughing, spluttering, jerking, and kangaroo hopping in precisely the manner he was before I put him into their care. Over seven decades, it has been my persistently irritating experience that any motorised vehicle put into the care of mechanics comes back not only minus any kind of performance improvement, but often worse than it was when you gave them the bloody thing in the first place.

Meanwhile – here comes the half-empty glass – the mornings are starting later, the evenings darkening earlier. Autumn is coming in Middle-Western Europe, and it was very obvious soon after dawn today, when the chill air was like a trailer for the movie Winter. But the sunrise was so special, the temperature really didn’t matter. It has long been my view that, if you want a degree of tranquility, ensure that every day allows you to see a horizon. This is a rule I try never to break.

Earlier at The Slog: Whatever Joan Edwards wanted, why were her lawyers so blind to it?