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AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



September, 1907 



The Gourd Garden Fully Grown Is Thickly Screened with Handsome Foliage 



specimens should be used. Take a bottle gourd and cut oft by spoon gourds as legs, 

 its stem, and you have a Hower vase; make a cut further 

 down, and you have a jardiniere, which may be decorated in 

 oil colors as your fancy pleases; make another cut and you 

 have a bowl. This may be decorated in pyrography and 

 used for crackers, fruits or other purposes. Even a plain 

 Hercules club, decorated with pyrography, may be effectively 

 used as a den ornament. They can be transformed into musi- 

 cal instruments, forming horns with quite a real tone, and 

 they can be used as ball clubs for light work. 



Sugar-troughs can be put to many useful as well as orna- 

 mental purposes, such as jardinieres, seed-dishes and punch 

 bowls, by cutting away a por- 

 tion of the top and dec- 

 orating with oil colors or 

 pyrography. Or they can 

 be turned into drums by cut- 

 ting away a quarter of the 

 top and stretching a parch- 

 ment over the aperture. 

 Among many African tribes 

 these drums have a practical 

 utility. The green skin of 

 a young goat is stretched 

 over the aperture, drawn 

 very tightly and allowed to 

 dry thoroughly. Such drums 

 yield a very penetrating 

 sound when beaten, and are 

 used as a wireless system of 

 communication between sep- 

 arated tribes, each village 

 having its trained drummers 

 who will send these signals 

 from hill to hill for several 

 hundreds of miles. 



The dipper gourd is the 

 easiest variety to use, and 

 permits of the most useful 

 applications. They make 

 beautiful long-stemed flower 



vases. Clip off the top and 

 use as a fancy perfume bottle, 

 with a miniature bottle as a 

 stopper. Cutting out a third 

 of the side and neatly sand- 

 papering the edges makes a 

 good dipper and an attrac- 

 tive article for decoration. 

 Cut the bulb part in the 

 middle, rounding the edges 

 with sandpaper, and use the 

 upper part as a calling horn 

 or megaphone, and one will 

 be surprised with the sounds 

 that can be made and the 

 audibleness of words at a 

 considerable distance. The 

 bowl part, when decorated 

 say with bronze designs, py- 

 rography or oil colors, makes 

 an attractive nut-bowl. No 

 change is needed to trans- 

 form this into a child's eating 

 dish, save a spoon, and this 

 can be formed from a spoon 

 gourd, cut as a perfect spoon. 



A vase can be made by 

 taking a long bottle gourd 

 and supporting its bulb part 

 Miniature bottles can be trans- 

 formed to salts or peppers by puncturing the stem and mak- 

 ing a small aperture on the bottom, which should be closed 

 with a cork. A whole tea set, in fact, can be made from 

 the various varieties that any one can grow easily. 



If the gourds have turned black or rusty, paint them and 

 cover up their imperfections, for the beauty of their forms 

 will still be preserved. If one is not handy with the brush, 

 they may be decorated with cut-out pictures or with photo- 

 graphs pasted on. In short, by the application of a little 

 taste and ingenuity a host of beautiful and useful objects 

 can be made from this fruit of the garden, a fruit interesting 



The Gourd Garden in Early Spring Is a Barren Waste of Stones and Base Supports 



