On Seeing Cucurbits

Pumpkin, squashes and gourds are one (or three?) of my favourite autumn aspects. Their colours and shapes would, I think, enamour me of them anyway, even without their heart tie.

The displays at West Dean, and later at a small specialist grower of what, thanks to Kew Gardens website, I now know are members of the cucurbit family, produce this odd splitting sensation. On one level, I am admiring the composition of the piles of produce, noting the differences in texture and colours, knowing that under hand their skins will be a mixture of smooth coolness punctuated with gnarled scars.

On another, I am back in my grandfather’s small holding, perusing the lines of that season’s fantastically shaped squashes in the honeyed late summer sun, their appearance over the summer quite magical; then admiring them, piled up in his shop, inviting to be touched or carried home and drawn in oil pastel; then using a giant almost white squash as a seat, no longer finding Cinderella’s coach outlandish.

Even in these photos I see two things, maybe three things: the photo, it’s contrasts and colours; the now memory of photographing them experiencing past and present at the same time; and hovering behind it all photographs of my childhood memories, fading slightly and fingered at the edges but solid even in intangibility.