Jim and I were reminiscing last week about old friends we haven’t seen for years. One couple lived on his grandmother’s lovely old farm in Piedmont North Carolina. Phyllis had the proverbial green thumb; she could throw some seeds on the ground, and they would sprout into something beautiful or unique.

Near the farmhouse, Phyllis maintained a huge old scuppernong grape arbor with gnarled, ropy vines. Each spring, Phyllis planted gourd seeds that would soon grow into leafy vines that twined and twirled around the arbor wires. By high summer, large bottle gourds of varying sizes and shapes hung from the vines like lanterns in a Marrakech bazaar. Phyllis was an artist and fashioned rattles and drums decorated with feathers and beads from the dried gourds.

The bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria), also called birdhouse gourd, like squash, pumpkin, zucchini, melon, and cucumber, is a member of the Cucurbitae family. The bottle gourd probably originated in Africa, but gourd remains also...