since I've blogged here. Granted, since my editor decided that my posting my articles here before I sent them to her was something with which she did not agree - including, but not limited to, her telling me to take down this blog - I have limited time to devote to an extra article for the blog. I really need an extra six working hours a day. Who needs sleep, anyway?
Time has once again galloped along at a rate that I’m starting to find ... horrifying. It seems like just recently I was writing about fall clean up. Then it was winter, not being able to get to work due to the snow on the roads, building snow families on the back deck and gallons of hot chocolate. Spring and summer have come and gone – again – in seemingly the blink of an eye. We had some frost last Wednesday; not bad – didn’t kill the last straggling tomatoes or the watermelon that JUST WON’T GET RIPE – but frost all the same.
Conversations have turned from summer clothes and swimming in the river to how much snow we might get this winter and “Do you think Father Christmas could bring me a rad snowboard for Yule?”
The garden is not excluded from this either, you know. I’ve been thinking about the bags of shredded paper I’ve stockpiled from the paper shredder at work to mulch into the soil before it freezes. I’ve considered tilling and then covering with newspaper to kill off the weeds in the areas I’m wanting to use next spring. I’ve been wondering who made off with my garden cart and who I’m going to have to kill to get it back.
I’ve also been thinking about gourds…I grew some and it’s high time I did something with them.
Nothing really sets the mood for fall like gourds and Indian corn and pumpkins. Gourds are so cool and you can do a ton of things with them. Birds like them for housing, when they’re dried out with an appropriate hole cut into them for easy access.
Here’s what YOU can do so you can use them for fall decorating:
Harvest them when the stem is try but before the first serious frost invades. Cut them from the vine with a few inches of stem intact.
Wash and disinfect the gourds with either a diluted bleach solution (1 tsp. of bleach in a gallon of water) or white vinegar, water and grapefruit seed extract.
Gently dry with a cloth. Place your gourds on layers of newspaper in a warm and well-ventilated area (like the laundry room). Don’t put them in direct sunlight as this will fade the colors. And be careful not to scratch or bruise the tender skin.
Turn your gourds regularly and replace any newspaper the becomes damp with fresh, dry paper. Curing a gourd can take one to six months, so be prepared for your gourds to practically become members of the family – only members who eat a whole lot less than the human ones!
The skin of a gourd will take about a week to harden on the outside but will take at least a month to dry out on the inside.
When you shake the gourd and hear those seeds rattling around inside, it’s done. You can then apply wax, varnish or paint, cut a hole in it and get the seeds out, leave them whole for decorating or a variety of other crafts that you can easily locate through Bing or Google.
Happy Gourding!!
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