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Freshly picked gourds

Last Halloween I had a few friends over. One of those friends brought a friend, who brought me a lovely decorative gourd. I’ve always loved those things for some reason, and it was just a very sweet thing for her to do.

After having the gourd displayed in my dining room for a couple of months, I started to grow a little tired of it, but I hate to waste, and I really hated to throw away a thoughtful gift. The gourd seemed like it would never decay, which would have made me feel justified in getting rid of it.

So instead, I gave it new life. I planted it in one of my garden beds. I buried it whole. I didn’t harvest the seeds or do anything else special. Just stuck it in the ground and forgot about it.

I didn’t think about it again until several weeks ago when a giant clump of sprouts popped up in my garden, like some kind of chia pet. Puzzled, I dug it up and was delighted to see that squash holding together the sprout clump. What the heck – I put it back in the ground and let it grow. It came this far, after all.

Garden bed - overrun by gourds

It has really taken over. It pretty well owns one entire 8X4 garden bed, and it keeps trying to work its way into the one next to it. I’ve had to pry it off of my kale and lambsquarters a couple of times already.

I picked my first batch of gourds. Not really sure what to do with them all, and there are surely so many more to follow. This has been a fun experiment, but one I don’t think I’ll repeat.

Raspberry bush

Last spring, after having given up on producing my own blueberries, I planted a raspberry bush. Within weeks, it was dead….or so I thought.

Today, I finally got around to removing the little protective fence I’d put around it, and discovered that the bush was still alive. Not only that, but it has berries on it!

Perhaps the secret to success, at least when it comes to berry bushes, is to ignore them.