Lmst

Borage, ready for fritters! Yum! 😋

#edibleflowers #borage #borragine #boragoofficinalis #plantbased #fromthegardentothetable #vegetarian #eatingflowers #lifestyle #eatplants #eatingfrommygarden #thegoodlife

#BloomScrolling while strolling around the backyard am 21st Nov 2025

#Borage #Calendula #Pomegranate

Yellow petals and darker yellow centre of bunched flowers in sunshine

Sunshine on calendula plant; yellow centre with orange petal flowers

Purple pink & lilac petals on the borage flower with “furry” stems

#BloomScrolling while strolling around the backyard Fri 14 Nov ‘25

#Borage #Nasturtium

Red petals yellow centre and stamens of Nasturtium flower growing up towards light among broad dark green leaf parsley.

Blue-Purple petals of borage plant
With “furry” stems
in late arvo sunlight

Yellow petals flowers plant with thin green leaves.

#borage #gardening #newzealand #spring

#BloomScrolling while strolling around the backyard Sat 1st Nov 2025

#Borage #Kiwifruit #Calendula

Seen from below brown “furred stem” and five pink petals of “purple” Borage plant

Creamy yellow flowers of kiwi fruit vine

Multiple orange petals and yellow/orange centre of calendula flower

Yellow petals and orange centre plants in the dappled light below trees

#BloomScrolling while strolling around the backyard

#Borage

Multiple pink petals & yellow centre multiple stamens flower.

Fine lilac-purple petals on herb flowers assorted shape green leaves and stems on plant.

Purple blue Five petals and five “points” star borage flower with green “furry” leaves and stems

#BloomScrolling while strolling around the backyard

#Borage #KangarooApple

Borage
Five purple petals in sunlight “furry” stems and green leaves

Kangaroo apple
Purple petals yellow pistles/centre
large long green “kangaroo paw” leaves
Bright blue cloudless sky.

#Borage #flower profile.

#Bloomscrolling #florespondence #gardening #plants #botanical #nature #PollinatorGarden #Wsanec #Saanich #VictoriaBC #YYJ #Zone8 #VancouverIsland #VanIsle #PacificNorthwest #Cascadia #PNW #Fuzzy #EdiblePlants

Close-up view of a borage plant with various stages of development. A single, vibrant blue, star-shaped flower is in full bloom, while several developing buds in different shades of pink and purple surround the open flower, all covered with fine, spiky hairs. The plant's stems are green and covered in similar hairs, and the background includes a blurred blue sky and hints of green foliage.

Earlier this year I distinctly remember saying that I wasn’t going to bother with the garden this year because I just couldn’t be bothered. I definitely wasn’t going to have any more hardy banana plants because they’re not cheap and I’ve never managed to get them through a winter successfully.

Anyway, here I am at the end of July, I’ve run out of space for more plants and I have 3 hardy bananas! I did “no mow May” and was convinced I’d killed the lawn after mowing it because it was a mess but with some over seeding and a good fertiliser it’s the best it’s ever been. Yes, I need to try and level out some of the worst bumps but that can wait for next year

I was inspired by watching the bumble bees attack my one sea holly to buy more (which probably won’t bloom this year) and then I grew borage from seed to keep the bees happier for longer and a few more salvia for the same reason. (Next year will be all about the bees!). My solar powered plant irrigator keeps the more sensitive plants watered (from a large bucket) for when I’m away but most things here are drought tolerant.

I’m really rather pleased with the results!

#gardening #borage #seaholly #bees

A photo of a domestic garden. A grey fence and a path runs along the left hand side and above it can be seen the upper floor and roof of a brick built house. At the bottom can be seen a grey weather beaten wooden garden shed with windows. Above that can be see the roof of a house which is partly hidden by a tall green tree. High above the sky is blue with thin clouds.
The garden itself consists of a small green lawn. In front of the shed there is a lot of small green plants with a few barely visible plants. There is a small (approx 6 feet tall) mountain ash tree in a pot.
On the right is an unruly green bush that stretches along the totally hidden fence and is now reaching across some of the lawn
In the forefront of the picture are a large number of plants in pots and all in different heights. Some have red flowers and some have blue. Interspersed can be seen the small globes of solar lights and there is a small but colourful tiki head with a solar panel embedded in it.

Down the Rabbit Hole

This is not a rabbit but an Asiatic lily, var. “Tango”

Even as we were literally beating the bushes around the garden trying to evict the second of the two baby rabbits, I read a blog post from an intentional community farm (whose name I cannot at the moment recall) about slow clothing and creating their own on-farm process from fiber to clothes. They have a few sheep but they had recently added angora rabbits. Since we are in the waning of chicken-keeping and James and I both love having animals around and we are not likely to share our space with cats again for various reasons, I thought, rabbits are vegetarian and they can be trained to use a litter box. What if we get a couple of angora rabbits? And off I went, searching across the internet.

Turns out Angora rabbits are huge animals, weighing as much as 12 pounds! They must be brushed practically everyday, which is good for the fiber collecting but time-intensive, and shaved at least once a year. They do not tolerate heat because of all that fur. But they have gentle and cuddly personalities, and are one of the most adorable critters ever! They live on average 7-12 years.

When I floated the idea to James he was horrified. We’re chasing rabbits out of the garden and you want to bring one in the house? Well yeah, but…

You can imagine how it went after that. I have since snapped back to reality, because as awesome as it would be to have my own angora to spin into fiber, one of the things about having cats in the house was always coping with all that fur. Cats are not nearly as furry as angora rabbits. And I am certain that it would not be long before the near daily grooming devolved from fun to 12 years of tedium and regret. Plus I still have unspun wool I bought two years ago making it not hard to imagine all the rabbit fur piling up waiting to be spun. I’d have to get a spinning wheel instead of a drop spindle but even then with all the time spent rabbit grooming, when would I have time to do all the other things like garden and bike, and read, and all the other crafts I enjoy AND spin all that rabbit fur and then use the yarn to make things?

It was a lovely poofy cuddly dream while it lasted.

In the meantime, we did actually get the second rabbit out of the garden. The rabbit was even kind enough to reveal the hole in our defenses, a tiny gap only a couple inches wide between our fence post and the neighbor’s chain link fence. If James hadn’t watched the scared rabbit leap and squeeze themself through that 2-inch gap, we would not believe it possible. Gap blocked, we are now rabbit-free and the ravaged peas are making a valiant comeback effort. Only it’s July and they are doomed to not make it in the summer heat. But I don’t have the heart to tell them that so I let them know how pretty their new leaves are.

I do think there is a rabbit population boom this year. The other morning on my way to work I saw no fewer than 8 rabbits on my block alone. Four of them were playing chase in a neighbor’s front yard and they were so cute! I can say that because they were not in my garden. The squirrel population crashed this year. It had been growing ever larger for several years and last summer I could look out almost any time of day and see three or four squirrels in the garden. But this year, there is only one who is consistently about. Of course it is the one who likes to play spider-squirrel on my screen door.

I was siting at my kitchen table having lunch not long ago. The sliding glass door to the deck was open and I watched the squirrel hop up the couple deck steps from the garden, bound across the deck and throw themself against the screen door where they stuck like velcro. Then they proceeded to gleefully climb all over the screen, up and down, backwards and forwards, around in circles. I’m sitting at the table yelling at Squirrel to get the fuck off the screen. Of course they ignored me. He—it was obviously a he—stopped climbing around and was just hanging out on the screen. His creamy fluffy belly was rather alluring, and I briefly wondered if it was as soft as it looked and whether I could touch it. But then he began moving around again, putting tiny holes in the screen. Enough! I stood up and he saw me coming, leapt off the screen and scampered away. I have seen him come up onto the deck for a drink of water since then but no more screen climbing, at least not while I have been watching.

The black raspberries this year are gifting us with bowls and bowls of fruit. We gave some to our nextdoor neighbor, and I even gave some to Mrs. Dashwood who has never had raspberries before. She gave it a long look before she pecked and then she gobbled it down and looked at me for more. I gave her a couple more and was rewarded with her happiest of happy coos.

Sea of green: milkweed, beans, cucumber, pumpkin, and amaranth. Also carrots hiding in there somewhere.

I’ve been experimenting with making raspberry leaf sun tea on the deck. The first batch was raspberry leaf and rose petals. I didn’t use enough raspberry leaves so it ended up tasting less like tea and more like flavored water. But the combination was lovely. This weekend I tried raspberry leaf and chocolate mint. I used plenty of raspberry leaves but added too much mint which overwhelmed the taste of the raspberry. And no, it didn’t even have a chocolatey hint. However, it’s been summer hot and since I iced the tea, the mint ended up being refreshing. I think next time I will go with raspberry leaves only in hopes for something slightly fruity. I also have a bunch of raspberry leaves drying so I can use them in tea over winter.

I also have elderberry flowers hanging up to dry for tea. And I’ve got enough nettle leaves dried to last me well into next spring’s allergies. I’ve got some mint drying, but will make sure to do more before summer is over. There will be tulsi basil to dry at the end of summer and lots of borage. I’m excited about the borage. I’ve tried to grow it before as a plant I bought and have never had any luck. The plant has always been stunted and anemic. This year I decided to try growing from seed, and bingo! I have quite a few plants that have large leaves and are looking quite sturdy. Yay! And after years of failing with calendula I have a nice little patch of that going too.

As the summer heat has settled in, the beans are now growing fast and would do Jack and giants proud. This morning I saw there are flowers on the peach tomato. I’m hoping the other tomatoes aren’t far behind. The cucumbers are ridiculously healthy and flowering. Fingers crossed they begin fruiting soon. The pumpkins and butternut squash vines are about to get unruly. The Swiss chard is days away from being large enough to start picking.

Yup, the summer garden is about to be amazing!

Reading

Book: On Lying and Politics by Hannah Arendt. Wow, Arendt knew what she was talking about and it’s terrifying. Basically, she concludes lying is inherent to politics, always has been, always will be. But the best defense is a population of people with critical thinking skills. I can’t help but feel like we’re doomed.
Book: Is This My Final Form? by Amy Gerstler. A shapeshifting poetry collection. “As a fuzzy/headed chick, my alarm call but an anguised/hiccup, I once observed a scurry of squirrels, concealed in a hollow tree, wearing seventeenth/century clothes. Alas, no one believes me.” From “When I was a bird.”
Poem: Resistance by Margaret Elphinstone. “is weeds which survive underfoot,/sprayed and uprooted;/is slow lichen on scoured rock:/is seeds that wait in the dark”
Article: What many environmentalists get wrong about the money system, and why it’s important by Matthew Slater. All about how money works and doesn’t work. “That system is breaking down and increasingly contested and has no capacity to include new ideas and values. Perhaps the best you and I can do towards a better system is to stop believing in the current one, to withdraw from it (to a greater or lesser extent), and create new, gangster-free informal economic contexts.”

Quote

“The chances of factual truth surviving the onslaught of power are very slim indeed; it is always in danger of being maneuvered out of the world not only for a time but, potentially, forever. Facts and events are infinitely more fragile things than axioms, discoveries, theories—even the most wildly speculative ones—produced by the human mind; they occur in the field of the ever-changing affairs of men, in whose flux there is nothing more permanent than the admittedly relative permanence of the human mind’s structure. Once they are lost, no rational effort will ever bring them back.”

~Hannah Arendt, On Lying and Politics, page 9

Listening

Podcast: Between the Covers: Madeline Thien: The Book of Records. I have this book on my desk and I can hardly wait to get to it. This was a really good interview.
Podcast: Planet Critical: Why we can’t understand each other: Damien Williams. This was fascinating. All about language and communication and how we don’t actually communicate anymore. As for language, well, we may be using the same words but not the same meanings and so we are all living in different realities.

James’s Kitchen Wizardry

While we didn’t feel like there was much to celebrate for Independence Day, James still made from-scratch vegan hot dogs, buns, baked beans, and French fries. So delicious! He also made a small batch of raspberry jam today. Also delicious. So blessed and grateful for the garden’s abundance and James’s cooking skills!

#angoraRabbits #beans #borage #fiber #handSpinning #peas #rabbits #raspberries #squirrels #sunTea

Asiatic lily with creamy petals and a dark maroon middle

Milkweed in the foreground with bush beans immediately behind, pumpkin vine mixed among the beans and behind the beans a mound of cucumber vines with amaranth growing up between some of the vines

#SilentSunday #BloomScrolling #borage #gardening #photography

A very close up view of a flowering borage plant. One fully open purple blossom hangs face down while the buds of future blossoms hang near by. The entire plant is covered in tiny fine hairs that reflect the sunlight light giving the plant an overall furry look. The background greenery is out of focus.

Good Morning.

Borage is beginning to bloom. I so love blue flowers, and blue food. #BloomScrolling #borage #GoodMorning

Blue borage flowers beginning to open against a backdrop of greenery from a New England Aster.

Pollinator plant bed update. The purple coneflowers and bergamot bee balm have started to bloom The anise hyssop has had flowers for a week or so. There are still giant pansies and Johnny jump ups blooming and lots of blue borage and calendula getting flowers.

#PollinatorPlants #EchinaceaPurpurea #MonardaFistulosa #AgastacheFoeniculum #calendula #BeeBalm #borage #ViolaTricolor #ViolaFlower #PurpleConeflower #hyssop #flowers #BloomScrolling #PurpleFlowers #PinkFlowers #YellowFlowers #BlueFlowers

A purple coneflower that has pink petals and looks sorta like a daisy except it's 4 feet in the air.

Bee balm flower, monarda, that is pink in color. It has spiky petals in a cluster. The background is 95% bee balm foliage.

Several flower stalks of anise hyssop. The flowers are purple in color. The plant leaves look like mint or catnip. It smells like licorice.. or anise.

Two deep yellow calendula flowers, yellow pansies, dark purple pansies, blue borage, strawberry plants, yellow/white/purple viola tricolors, a hazel sapling, some small eastern europe type sage, many things really.

Bit of rain, bit of sun, and up come my wildflowers.

#wildflower #borage #speedwell #blossom #nature #sorrel #nasturnum #hawthorn #fieldpenny # tansy #flax

雨の日のボリジさん♪
#ボリジ #ルリジサ #borage #ビバ丼お花部 #ビバ丼写真部 #マストドン写真部

Der Borretsch blüht im Garten. // The borage is blooming in the garden. #Foto #Fotografie #photo #photography #Garten #garden #Borretsch #borage

Afternoon stroll

Canon R7 Mirrorless - Canon EF-S 60mm Macro - ISO: Varied - Aperture: f/8 Shutter Speed. 1/100 sec

#Photo #Photography #Macro #Closeup #Flowers #Cosmos #Marigold #Borage #Honeybee #MILC #Mirrorless #CanonR7 #Canon60mmMacro #GiMP

I have taken so many photos of #flowers recently that I can't wait for a #FlowerFriday every week. Here is a #borage #plant that popped up in my garden. It's small and easily overlooked, but if you look closer, it's very interesting and so unique.

#Borretsch #Gurkenkraut #Blume #Blumen #flower #starflower #BoragoOfficinalis #bloomScrolling #Florespondence