The young snake gourd in the foreground, and the bigger gourd that appeared so suddenly, in the background. What a difference in sizes!

There are times when I feel like a blind person who can suddenly see. I may not check on all my plants on a daily basis, but I do try to keep abreast of all the changes and goings-on. So, when I was checking in on the young snake gourd I told you about a couple of days ago, I had the shock of my life when I suddenly noticed a bigger gourd growing not 15cm away from it! I let out an exclamation that isn’t very PG and must have made our neighbor laugh, because this was not a small fruit – it was close to 20cm long and as you can see, is not a skinny thing. How could it have grown without my seeing it until now? Honestly, seeing it so suddenly was like it appeared there like magic! I even checked on my earlier pictures to see if it had been there, but it wasn’t.

The bigger fruit has white stripes as opposed to the pale green of the young fruit, and touching it to test its “sproing” factor left a slightly sticky residue that Curious Mama thought smelled like pandan, but I thought smelled like raw peanuts. She usually has a better sense of smell than I do, so I’ll concede this point to her…

A closer look at the bigger snake gourd.

The young snake gourd that I mentioned previously is getting bigger, too – it’s about 2cm longer than at last report, and now has another little sibling to keep it company …that I have seen, anyway. Who knows how many other little fruits are hiding from me right now?

On the whole, the snake gourd vine is growing like wildfire. It has taken over the long bean trellis completely, and has climbed along the fence and reached out to join the angled loofah on its trellis. It has also tried to climb over the neighbor’s lime plant, but has been firmly turned back to our side of the fence. I guess the neighbors prefer keeping their lime plant unsmothered than the possibility of getting free snake gourds! (the unwritten rule of neighbours: you get to keep what grows on your side of the fence)

As for the big surprise snake gourd, the only explanation I can think of is that it must have been hidden among the leaves until it got so big and heavy that it had to dangle down, and as it got heavier, it got low enough to finally be seen by yours truly. What a nice surprise!

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