Fruits and vegetables serve as important symbols, appearing throughout the story at different points. The very first time the reader meets Hằng, she is chewing on ginger to quell her anxious stomach, and when she settles on the ranch later in the story, she grows the rhizome herself in her little vegetable garden, which Mr. Morgan uses to make ginger ale.

Similarly, LeeRoy is also introduced with a vegetable in his mouth. Hằng is amazed to see LeeRoy eat raw celery when she meets him for the first time, and when he leaves the ranch at the end of the summer, she hands him a gift of fresh, washed and cut celery, grown in her vegetable garden. The ginger and celery both appear in the beginning and end of the story in almost parabolic fashion; they are used for the same things at both times, but the circumstances have changed vastly in the meantime.

Fruits are also a symbol of the connection Hằng and Linh have to their childhoods in Vietnam. Mrs. Brown notes how the first time Linh spoke after arriving in the United States was when he tasted an unripe plum.