Photo of the Day: Bowl Gourds

Gourds are cool. Not only do the vines look nifty while they’re growing, but they leave behind future bowls, birdhouses, planters and other craft projects. This year a bowl gourd plant showed up and decided to make its home on the north fence of the vegetable garden… and the orange trees… and the bottle brush trees.

Now that the vines have died back there’s about a dozen well-shaped gourds in various states of dryness handing on the fence, and one literally in it. There’s probably a dozen more in the trees, but they’re too high up to get, so there they’ll stay until they fall out, break and create next year’s batch of gourd volunteers.

Here’s a few photos I snapped while picking them.

Gourds picked and piled for drying in the shed

Fresh picked bowl gourd off to dry

Bowl gourds in various states of dryness

Bowl gourd hanging on the fence

A family of bowl gourds growing on the fence

This bowl gourd grew through the fence mesh

Now they’re off to the shed to spend the winter drying.