Have you always thought, as I have, that the gnarly gourds of autumn are fairly weird, fairly useless garden oddities? Yes, they have a peculiar beauty and can make attractive table ornaments or centerpieces for holiday entertaining. But frankly, since they are nearly empty inside and yield only a few seeds to eat, they always struck me as a waste of garden space.
With no tools and skills yet available to readily create ceramic, glass, metal or even wooden bowls and vessels, clever ancient peoples worked with what nature provided. They just lopped off the gourd tops, removed (and ate) the seeds, and then turned the remaining bulbous portions into ladles, cups, bowls, bottles, canteens, jars and many other simple containers. Sometimes, they carved, painted, and polished whole gourds and prized them as toys, art or ritual objects, or as musical instruments such as rattles and drums (shown below right) and even guitars. Even now in parts of South America a traditional tea-like beverage called yerba maté is still drunk from calabash goblets, and certain Native American tribes still fashion gourds into ceremonial rattles, shakers and clubs. (Native Americans also made great use of cranberries; details are here.)
Now that I actually "get" gourds, I'm wondering if, in the interest of going greener, we more advanced societies should embrace them again. They are sustainably produced, biodegradable, naturally lightweight, sturdy, and come almost ready to use and in nearly infinite shapes (note the strange goose-neck gounds below left!). Perhaps learning to produce the vast array of environmentally unfriendly plastic-ware, bottles, and jugs that now litter our landscape reallywasn't progress at all? What do you think?
Perhaps you're in an autumn mood now and would like to try my pumpkin bread, or my pumpkin soup here.
