It took a long time before I understood the satisfaction of giving away vegetables, but the pleasure of harvesting them I acquired immediately. A good visit to Grandma and Grandpa's was one on a day he hadn't already harvested. On these occasions I could barely wait for Grandpa to hand me a basket and dispatch me to the garden to start the picking. Alone was best - when Grandpa came along, he would invariably browbeat me about some fault in my technique, so i made sure to get out there before he finished small-talking with Mom. Ripe vegetables were magic to me. Unharvested, the garden bristled with possibility. I would quicken at the sight of a ripe tomato, sounding its redness from deep amidst the undifferentiated green. To lift a bean plant's hood of heart-shaped leaves and discover a clutch of long slender pods hanging underneath could make me catch my breath. Cradling the globe of a cantaloupe warmed in the sun, or pulling orange spears straight from his sandy soil - these were the keenest of pleasures, and even today in the garden they're accessible to me, dulled only slightly by familiarity.

At the time this pleasure had nothing to do with eating. I didn't like vegetables any better than most kids do (tomatoes I considered disgusting, acceptable only in the form of ketchup), yet there it was: the vegetable sublime. [...] The vegetable garden in summer made an enchanted landscape, mined with hidden surprises, dabs of unexpected color and unlikely forms that my grandfather had taught me to regard as treasures.