As it turns out...

My first acquaintance with luffa came through my grandmother, who had a piece that she used and reused as a sponge for probably most of my childhood. When Galina and I moved to Florida and eventually bought our first house, I recall that one of the plants I raised in the garden was luffa, which—if memory servs—is a member of the cucumber family, although my interest in them was purely as a way to recapture part of my childhood.

So it came as a complete surprise to me this morning when, as part of a rather vigorous constitutional with Shiloh and Thumper, my eye spied something that looked like a dry piece of luffa lying between the sidewalk and the fence of the Armand Bayou nature preserve. I was, in fact, rather skeptical of the item's being a luffa, except that the shape and the three long seed chambers (still containing a few seeds) were unmistakable.

Seeing that it has rained around here lately and how relatively "clean" the fiber "skeleton" of the luffa is, I sort of doubt the seeds are viable, but I do intend to put them to the test, not to mention go back to where I found the luffa—without the dogs—and see what I can observe in the vicinity.

* * *Galina made a marvelous borshch. And there's quite a bit left, too! :^)