Accessible Gardening: Practical Matters for Physically Challenged Gardeners, 1 by seacanepain

seacanepain wrote:
Snakes in the trees! At least, they don’t bite. Snake gourds. I thought we had an agreement here; we would not grow any more snake gourds. We still have snake gourds from last year we haven’t found a use for. My dear wife claims these “planted themselves.”

When Kay lived far out in the woods by herself, she would grow them just for the purpose of being stolen around Halloween. She just liked shaping them so the fun was over when they were mature. She anticipated their “mysterious” disappearance. For boys of a certain age, walking back alone to where Kay lived and snagging a snake gourd was like a challenge of bravery. I gather it was sort of like the way my friends and I dared one another to go into the graveyard at night. The problem is now the boys of a certain age just walk in the front door (usually without knocking), hug Kay’s neck and head for the refrigerator. She lost her spooky aura somewhere. Her snake gourds are no longer sought after as trophies of courage.

Almost everyone wants to let them grow on in the tree as they are. It will look so weird! But, I’ve been out voted. No one knows how we will get them down out of the tree when they are mature. The tree is on a wild, steep bank. And, what in the world are we going to do with gourds that will probably end up looking like oversized baseball bats? I’m told when they grow hanging, they tend to grow straight. Well, no one can say the people at Amargia are out of their gourds. Obviously, some people here are really into their gourds. I guess I will head over to the Ornamental Gourd forum to see what I can find out. Jim