Why there are gourds all over steamHouse?
The Club grows them and throws the Gourd Gala every October. And in the Chronicles, a whole civilization starts with one.
An Ergaster, a land octopus, and a dragon — who by every rule of the natural order should have eaten each other. What they had in common was that gourds made them curious.
The curiosity is what did the work. It kept three natural enemies in conversation long enough to find out what each of them actually cared about — and what surfaced, in all three, was the same test. A way of doing things is worth keeping if it's effective, reasonable, and fun.
That's the discovery. The gourd was only the door.
And then the plant goes and makes the argument twice.
A zucchini, a jack-o'-lantern, a pattypan, and a warty orange ornamental gourd are all one species of Cucurbita. They cross freely. A butternut standing right next to them is a different species and won't. So what makes those four one thing isn't shape, color, size, or whether you eat it or carve it. It's one much smaller fact: whether two of them can make viable seed together.
The variety is the part that catches your eye. The shared thing is small, invisible, and load-bearing.
Which is the question, really. Not what do we all look like. What is the small thing we actually have to share for this to be one group — and how much difference will it carry?
What we hope to mark, to make meme is the notion that any cucurbita might remind us to be curious about differences in things and people…in novelty. So any time you see a watermelon, pumpkin or squash….