Gourds

My son has always been really intrigued by gourds.  When we re-landscaped our backyard a few years ago we actually built kind of a rustic stick frame structure that the kids could plant climbing plants around.  Connor, naturally picked out some Birdhouse gourd seeds.  The first few months they didn't seem to do much but then....

This is my daughter Annabelle inside "the Gourd House."  We ended up with about 4 monster sized gourds.  I had heard that you could dry and polish them so when we picked them in the fall we just let them sit outside for the remainder of the year.  They were very, very heavy and it was hard to believe that they would naturally dry out on the inside but they did just that.  Meanwhile, my best intentions to polish them went to the back burner and we were left with these two years later.

The fall season and the beginning of this blog inspired me to get this done.  One of the gourds had cracked which was fine with me since it would make a great bird house/feeder as the name implies.   I was told that the next step is to put them in a bleach water solution for 10 minutes and then scrub off all of the dirt and mold.  It sounded fast an easy from the descriptions I read.  Alas, I don't think most people had left them out for over two years and I had to put some serious scrubbing power into them.

Interestingly, the one who had been the most caked with mold and dirt had a beautiful mottled look to it that I love.  I'll just bet that those two years of neglect did it!  The final step is to rub a little shoe polish on them to give them a shine.  I think the'll end up on the mantlepiece for a little fall decoration.  I'll have to think up something fun to have coming (or maybe creeping) out of the cracked one.  Happy Fall everyone!