To Market: St. Mark's Church

Midday today hovered near 80 degrees, breezy though hot in the sun. But at the market in the dappled shade of St. Mark's Church, on the corners of 2nd Avenue and E. 10th Street, no one seemed to mind much.

The pleasant man behind the Breezy Hill Orchard & Cider Mill table volunteered that both the blueberries in his pies, and the butter in their crusts, were from Dutchess County, up around the Hudson Valley wine region. Otherwise, in the heat and lethargy of 3 p.m., no one was much for conversation.

Tiny red potatoes called to me, though. Piles of yellow wax beans and green string beans announced on their sign: Picked by hand! And attitude galore came from two crates of kirby cucumbers — squat but thick as baseball bats — and the zucchini, longer but matching in stature, beside them.

A dog (Strings, did the woman call him?) was busy with some pigeons, which were busy with some breadcrumbs that exactly the type of old woman to do such a thing threw out suddenly, near a garden of pink roses, to the small crowd's chagrin.

There was broccoli rabe, basil and bok choy, plus organic oatmeal bread, ginger cookies big as salad plates, and cardboard cartons of blueberries, $4 each or two for $7, but no fish. With a tug and a whoosh the back gate of the fish monger's white truck clicked closed for the day.

There were red and white onions, round cherry tomatoes in an awning's shade, and green peas for shelling, which for the first time in weeks I resisted.

But there was no ignoring four boxes of New Jersey peaches all ready to eat, if not a day past ripe. Which, because I am my mother's daughter, made me think they'd be perfect for marinating in red table wine, while dinner was prepared, and then eating for dessert, served in the old wide-mouth champagne glasses.

Standing over the peaches, deciding whether I could make it all the way home without bruising them, a woman reached for one as I did. Together we lifted the warm fruit toward our noses and, as the honey-sweet scent hit us, let out soft, involuntary moans.