Gourds and green

Dear Editor,

Now, I am sure you would like the yard to have the color of a golf course green, but there are other Greens.

The picture is of our wild gourd with 40-foot runners that grew along our driveway from a single plant. Yes, it is impossible to over-winter gourds, but this wild one has survived for two winters now. Few if any man-cultivated plants can survive without adding water and the terrible heat from the concrete driveway would kill all but the strongest so-called weeds.

Three years ago when I was digging at a lost village 40 miles west of here. I was amazed that wild gourds had no bug damage. Since then, I have been running tests with my daughter, a molecular plant biologist, to see if we can snake some of its DNA, but on the side we are using the leaves to make a anti- bug and deer tea that showed great promise this summer.

In the fall we cut and bundle the vines for fire starters for our copper burn-bowl to light up the nights on the deck.

I have some locals paying cash for the gourds as they make fish and snake traps out of them.

Now you can do what the Russians do (paint the ground green) or you can start growing wild plants that need no water, no mowing, and will pay your land taxes:

Bill Donze

McCook