I dream of zucchini … 6, 8, 10 feet long. A nightmare, really.
In my terrible dream, there’s no end to them. Hundreds, thousands, like an unstoppable army of thick vegetable pythons, slithering through the morning-dewed grass from garden to house. They are purposeful, determined, undeterred. I can hear them whispering, their voices insistent, demanding: “Eat me … eat me … eat me!”
I wake up in a cold sweat, afraid to look out the window. I imagine the dinner we should have eaten earlier of gazpacho soup, zucchini fritters and a salad of field greens, rather than the hot dogs and mac and cheese we did eat. I could have been virtuous, productive, enlightened.
It’s the end of the summer season, and my wife and I are drowning in late-season produce. We have too much of everything: buckets of cherry tomatoes, bags of onions, bowls of yellow squash, pyramids of cucumbers.
The cilantro in the herb garden is a small forest and the oregano and mint are overtaking the yard like invasive species.
We didn’t produce all this … produce. Some came from the CSA we share with friends in support of Somali farmers in Lewiston; some from smiling, sharing neighbors, happy to rid themselves of their own overabundance; some from our son-in-law, transitioning from house builder to organic farmer; some from our Saturday morning visits to the Kennebunk Farmers Market to buy late-season peaches and natural bug spray that doesn’t work; some from the Shady Brook Farm in Biddeford, whose lettuce is so perfect you feel guilty eating it. Better to spray it with fixative and decorate your coffee table with it.
Because we aren’t canners, storing and freezing the bulk of this vegetal abundance, I’m embarrassed to say that a good deal of it ends up in our compost pile. (Which, of course, I’ll till back into the soil next spring to ensure that once again we will grow more food than we can possibly eat. A delicious, rather than vicious, cycle.) I know this is a rich person’s problem, in the sense that poor people all over the world are malnourished and starving. But what to do?
In the Bible, God commands humans to go forth and multiply. Looking around, it seems we took this advice too seriously.
In truth, many of us simply have too much, from food to cars to flat-screen TVs. The natural bounty of summer only exacerbates this problem when, well-intentioned, we share this bounty with our family and friends and neighbors, rather than sharing with those among us who have less.
Along with the pride of growing your own food lingers a faint residue of guilt. Time for me, at least, to rethink this situation.
While I figure out my personal response to this dilemma, I contemplate this ocean of beautiful, healthy produce that overruns my gardens, fills my house and occupies my mind.
It’s a good problem to have, I guess, but right now it makes me want to drive to McDonald’s and order a cheeseburger and fries.
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