Yesterday afternoon, we noticed that two okra flowers were open. They were pale yellow and very pretty. When we came back in the evening, both flowers had already folded themselves up again, almost like buds.
The Okra Flowers
I thought they might open again the next day, but they did not. After looking it up, we learned that an individual okra flower only opens for about one day. Then it closes, and the plant starts putting its energy into making an okra pod. I had never noticed that before.
While looking at the flowers, we also noticed how huge the okra leaves are. Our biggest one is probably 25–30 centimeters across. It has five clear sections, with veins spreading out from a little point in the middle. It almost looks like a big hand opened wide in the sun.
Looking at the Gourd Vine
We were looking more closely at the gourd vine that same day, too. There were many white flowers, and we learned how to tell the male and female flowers apart. A male flower grows on a slender stem without a swelling beneath it. Under a female flower, there is already a little swelling—the beginning of a tiny gourd.
Then we looked over at the old gourds still hanging nearby from last year. They had been left outside through rain and weather, so they were dry, hard, and dark in places. Last year, we collected some dried gourds, scraped off the outside skin, and made little birdhouses from them. When you shake a completely dry one, you can hear the seeds inside.
It was funny to realize that in one part of the garden we could see the whole story at once: a flower, a little growing gourd, and an old dry gourd still holding seeds.
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