October 25, 2015 - 21:50
" The reason you clone rather than plant from seed is because potatoes, like human children, are wildly heterozygous. Lloyd taught me that word when I was eight. It simply means that if you try to propagate a domesticated potato using seed, sexually, chances are it will not grow true to type. Instead it will regress, displaying a haphazard variety of characteristics, reminiscent of its uncultivated potato progenitors--it may prove superior to the parent plant or may be wildly inferior. At eight, gazing up at my father's face, I didn't know which was worse" (57).
"Fourteen. It seemed impossible that I had ever been so young, or so in love. So sure of everything. I exhaled and the acrid smoke mixed with the frozen air. I;d forgotten about Idaho winters, how long and punishing they could be" (82).
(Lloyd) "'Not for me," he said. 'For your mother. If I an't take care of her, they'll put her away. She won't have her garden. Her seeds. They're all she remembers, Yumi'" (104).