My gourds runneth over

Mrs cohutt has been hounding me to do more gourd updates; just last night she pointed out that I only had 12 posts tagged with “gourds” and that maybe I was getting a little slack about her favorite subject.
What was I thinking? Maybe she’s right…..after all that’s only 17% of my posts having any sort of gourd theme or reference.

Fortunately, last week I took some pictures of the gourd vines as they were continuing their quest to cover everything within 10 feet of the back fence.

From previous posts you might recall that my good concept / bad engineering bamboo gourd tower was engulfed in gourd glory to the point of tottering over in a storm, then shortly after the top snapped under the rising weight of the heavy fruits (?) or whatever. The makeshift trellis netting canopy was overrun and had to be reinforced with bamboo due to the weight of the gourds.

The twine run from the bed / tower base to the fence were very effective in guiding the vines to the fence, where they continued to extend laterally, up and over:

There is a narrow gauntlet I have to run any time I need to move between the fading Martinos Romas and the mass of green vines eyeballing the open spaces to the north. (I certainly don’t loiter in this area, would you??):

My two wire compost bins are now concealed and the scrap fencing I had placed near the back gate for recycling is covered.  (The black garbage can was full of composed cow manure; one morning I came out and it was being pulled into the gourd mass, and I realized there was nothing I could do to save it. For real, look at how the vines are reaching for it. Game over, it is doomed. )

As Mrs cohutt is quick to remind me, anyone can have out of control vines; she says no gourds means all this is just kudzu ……

So what’s the gourd count?

I’ve made several attempts to count the maturing gourds on all the vines and keep coming up with different numbers but all are north of 55.

Well, crap.

I had hoped maybe I could get a couple dozen to set if I was lucky.

Gawd what a way to spend the winter……….