A fun excerpt from the story “Covered Bridges”, which is a part of “Homeland and Other Stories” by Barbara Kingsolver:
“Our courtship was very much a vegetable affair. By way of thanks I invited her to see my garden, and to my amazement she accepted. She had never grown vegetables herself, she said, and it impressed her to see familiar foods like cabbages rooted to the earth. I showed her how Brussels sprouts grow, attached along the fat main stem like so many suckling pigs. She seemed to need to take in the textures of things, brushing her hands across velvety petals, even rubbing my shirt sleeve absently between her thumb and forefinger as if to divine the essence of a botanist.”
“Our courtship was very much a vegetable affair. By way of thanks I invited her to see my garden, and to my amazement she accepted. She had never grown vegetables herself, she said, and it impressed her to see familiar foods like cabbages rooted to the earth. I showed her how Brussels sprouts grow, attached along the fat main stem like so many suckling pigs. She seemed to need to take in the textures of things, brushing her hands across velvety petals, even rubbing my shirt sleeve absently between her thumb and forefinger as if to divine the essence of a botanist.”
