The big dig

I have spent an entire month (that is no fewer than 30 whole days), grumbling about the fact that I need to dig up the herbs and bring them indoors for the winter. The tomatoes have all fallen, the bean vines have shriveled, there is still a wayward eggplant or two, but the basil is going gangbusters. And I believe it is my duty to capture this last remnant of summer, jam it into a pot, and tote it indoors where I will slowly, but inevitably, kill it.

There has only ever been one exception to the rule that I kill the herbs over the winter -- the sage plant that refused to die. And I don’t actually know the secret to this plant’s success story, other than it is perhaps a mutant. Sagey (as it is known to friends) froze, and thawed, and froze again, and re-thawed along with Zach and I on a school bus adventure until it was such a sorry state of matter that the kind thing to do would have been to just put it out of its misery in the compost heap. Instead, I brought it indoors and placed it in the sunniest corner of my room, which happened to be atop the tiny television that I turn on every so often to watch basic-cable reruns of The Office. Perhaps that’s what did it; this particular plant just really appreciates wry humor and comic irony. I too happen to feel that John Krasinski is entirely worth living for, but that’s another story. The point is, it survived, and it’s given me hope that this plant’s success can actually be repeated.

I got the potting soil ready, I stockpiled the pots, I located the shovels, but I couldn’t find enough pluck to actually get the job done. Until today, when operation indoor herbs finally took effect, and so far, so good. But, all this procrastination had me thinking -- Why couldn’t I just go dig up the flipping plants already? And the answer came to me as follows: Because I was avoiding the issue -- the issue, in this case, being not so much the actual herbs, as the bigger picture. If I bring the herbs inside, I might kill them, despite all my beautiful efforts. If they remain outside, Mother Nature will certainly do the job, sad, yes, but it will be out of my hands. Today I finally decided to take control.

            As I began to extricate the herbs, the bold stratification of the garden dirt caught my attention. The top 6 inches was, inarguably, just sand, and the plants had plunged their roots deeper into the darker soil to stabilize and find some nutrition. Cape Cod is, essentially, a large sandbar, making agriculture a bit of a challenge. That’s not to say it doesn’t exist, in fact the Cape’s gastronomic geography has actually transformed significantly within the past few years with more farmers, farmers’ markets, and consumer support for the products than ever before. This sandy island is entirely hospitable, sometimes you just need to dig a little deeper.

            Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, one of the Cape’s better known culinary commodities happens to be the bivalves that live just offshore and which are also not unfamiliar with the concept of digging in. Filter feeders by nature, eating bits and pieces carried by the currents, most of the native bivalves are content to sit and wait for nutrition to arrive on the tide. Some are mobile, such as the sea scallop, but the ever-popular Wellfleet oyster (well, all the oysters, actually, wellfleetion or not) just attach and relax, remaining in one spot for the majority of their lives, and quite happily (or at least, I like to think so). Then there are the clams that actually dig themselves deep in to the safety of the sludge and ocean bottom clay, feeding still with a siphon that catches nutrients on the water that slides by the shellfish, deeply entrenched and content.

            Sometimes, I’m a bivalve. It’s easy to be. Faced with only a glimmer of a hope of what we, in the underemployment industry, call “real” employment, I often resign myself to a certain place and lifestyle to make the best of the situation. I was born and raised on Cape Cod, and have returned to family, friends, and a beautiful food culture. The problem is, the Cape native species are great at digging in; it feels a bit tricky to pull oneself back out.
          At this point in my life I am in the business of collecting rejection letters. In fact, the collection is so impressive that when an acceptance letter snuck in, I had forgotten what to do with it. I thought about keeping it, tucked in its envelope, in a file somewhere as a nice memento. And then I realized that’s not really what it’s about. So I dug up the herbs today, to give them a chance at weathering the winter, and the newly mobile (well, sort of) herbs and I will be moving to Boston (actually to one of the city’s less expensive suburbs), where I will begin studying for my Food Studies Certificate at Boston University in 2012. That is to say, come January, I will enter the business of collecting collegiate degrees. But, real job at the end of the tunnel or not, something more will be learned, and though the herbs' winter fate remains a bit of a gamble, what's important is simply that the time has come to dig out.