Left Hand Valley Courier - All Local, All The Time

I picked up a packet of gourd seeds last spring with the thought that some of the little, colorful things would look great in my fall décor. I imagined tucking them into nooks near pumpkins, by straw bales and corn stalks, even hot gluing them onto a fall wreath. I should have stopped daydreaming and read the seed packet instead.

What these plants produced are not the four-inch, green-yellow-white table décor. Oh, no. I knew something was different when the first one swelled into a large, bulbous swan-neck gourd. Then another did the same, and a third looks as if farmers could use it...