Friday, September 6, 2013

Simple strength

Today the garden is brimming over with heirloom tomatoes and gourds.  The gourds were planted by my bird friends and most likely by Ripley (the ever mischevious lab). He was eating gourds last summer as a puppy and in breaking them open acted as his own Ripley Gourdseed and spread a wealth of gourds throughout the garden that I had no idea existed.

And so it was this summer with seed packets in hand that I  prepared to plant new gourds - as I surveyed the perfect place to plant them  I noticed they were already there - how I was not sure but I allowed them to stay in their preplanted spaces and sit back and watch.

And they grew and grew and now they are almost ready for the harvest. Along with the gourds grew purple and green basil and wonderfully colorful heirloom tomatoes in green and orange.

The gourds have an incredibly fascinating affair of tendrils - how they do what they do would only be explained with time lapse, but they begin their lives curled in a tight circle.  They slowly unfurl reaching for the nearest support - stretch their tendrils and expand like slinky's to hold their burden. In this case gourds are held high and suspended over the garden by this maze of tendrils.

You can see the stretch in the loops of vine as they struggle to keep all of the gourds suspended above the ground. I am astounded always by nature - how do these plant tendrils do what they do and so well. How do they "know" how to grab, attach and balance their load. In one case three veins are at work to suspend their important fruit. Amazes me always.

Beautiful fragrant basil. Sitting happily in the barn.

How fascinating to see the suspension bridge.

A tripod affair of mother nature.

What a lovely "weed" with delicate pink flowers.

All that work for this little beauty. 

No comments:

Post a Comment