““At the end of each day, Elizabeth read to me. She had shelves and shelves of children's classics, dusty hardcovers with stamped gold titles: 'The Secret Garden', 'Pollyanna', and 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn'. But I preferred her viticulture textbooks, the illustrations of plants and chemical equations clues to the world that surrounded me. I memorized vocabulary- nitrate leaching, carbon sequestration, integrated pest management- and used them in casual conversation with a seriousness that made Elizabeth laugh.””
