When our garden gets to this point in the summer it isn’t hard to work and play, and totally get lost in it! My kids, dogs, and I were pretty much absorbed in dirt and plants for the better part of two days.

Over the past month our polite little plants decided to take off. The rain and the heat caused some crazy growth and now we have a garden that’s easily 5-6′ tall. It’s awesome.

And then there is my borage, the garden conundrum. If you’re familiar with this plant you know what I’m talking about, if you’re new to this plant hang in there.

It’s a self seeder, it reseeds like crazy, and it does better if you simply leave it alone and try not to mess with it. It attracts beneficial insects, great for a bio dynamic garden. Bee’s love it, so Ocean loves it, she’s our bee wrangler! It has the most gorgeous periwinkle/pink/dusty blue flowers, super gorgeous on cakes, in salads, and in cocktails! The young leaves are great in salads and stir fry’s. And parts of the plant can be infused into oil for skin slaves. It has great anti inflammatory and itch relief qualities. We have always made herbal infusion salves for our kids skin and dogs paws, borage is always one of the herbs I use.

BUT, its prickly and scratchy, and can almost be considered invasive if left unchecked. Like alien invasion invasive. Rubbing up against it makes me wince every time. But it’s so gorgeous and interesting to look at, and it has so many wonderful qualities it’s hard to justify not having it!

I try to find that happy balance and use about 3/4 of the borage I grow for green manure, meaning it grows to feed our compost pile.

Here is to gardens, with or without borage, dogs, and children that love to play in the dirt.