Celebrate Green Blog

Last spring I came across a package of egg-shaped gourd seeds. The picture of these small, perfectly shaped gourds had me dreaming of Easter! Even before I laid down my dollar twenty-five, I envisioned snapping them off the vine and turning them into memorable gifts for my grandkids.

I planted every seed in the package even though my raised bed garden is fairly small. I tossed a few into a bed that lines the garden area, assuming like most things I throw so cavalierly, they would never produce anything.

Was I wrong!

By the end of summer, the garden was such a tangle of vines that I had to pull a bunch out which felt like cutting off my own toes one by one. (I’m kind of crazy that way. Just because I’m casual about planting doesn’t mean I don’t think of each and every stem as my baby.)

Anyway, soon the vines were covered with flowers which miraculously turned into dozens of budding white bumps which eventually turned into full-blown shining white egg gourds-just like on the package but better since they were mine!

I headed to the internet and read about when to pick them at their peak and how to store them so they would dry and be ready to paint.

I had the perfect shelves where each gourd could sit alone, untouched by its brothers, circulating air being important for the drying process. Inside the garage, I learned was perfect spot for them to lie and dry.

Wrong.

Actually, I forgot all about them and since our garage houses ping pong and Foosball tables, and the cars sit in the driveway, in winter, I rarely visit. So it wasn’t until December that I happened to be out there searching for a screw driver when out of the corner of my eye, I saw the gourds.

Ugh! They had caught the plague! They looked disgusting! Mold that started as black spots and ended up as gray fuzz and gross brown ooze, covered almost all of them. I admit to being an emotional person, but gourds aren’t known to be one of my tear-triggers. Yet there, in the middle of the garage, in the middle of winter, screwdriver in hand, I admit I cried. (Not a lot, but enough to allow me to know that my disappointment ran deep.)

I’d started with such hope, such expectation and now there was nothing. OK, not nothing. Three little cuties were relatively unscathed. As though I were rescuing eggs from a nest, I carried the trio tenderly into the house and placed them on the dryer.

By the end of the week, two more had succumbed.

Now, a few days before Easter, I’m left with a single gourd. It turned a pale tan color, but never dried out.

I was very disappointed not to have dozens of colorfully painted egg-shaped gourds to fill my grandkids’ Easter baskets. But being one who tends to make lemonade from lemons, I will keep the single memory of my experiment as a reminder of what I felt when I first spotted that package of seeds and what this special time of year represents:

How do you celebrated hope?