Garden Fuss

Got Borage or Starflowers? If not get some quick! 🐝 Bees love it and so do I. Borage is one of few plants with naturally occurring true blue flowers. It is considered an herb and the leaves, blossoms, and stems are eaten in many places. My daughter and I have tried brewing it for tea but because of the high gelatinous mucilage in the leaves (think okra slime ewwww) we've decided to dry the leaves first before trying again. Besides tea I have only researched but yet to try other recipes using borage. I'm excited to try one that calls for blending it with braised greens and cheese for ravioli filling. When this happens I will be sure to post pictures and talk about our results. An interesting fact about Borage is that it's supposed to cure melancholy or make you feel courageous. I can't say that this really works but I know I feel better watching the interesting critters flitting about and flirting amongst one plant to the next. I'm growing it as an annual in...

Who likes to weed? I don't know anyone who likes it but it is essential to the health of plants you do want Not to let those plants you don't want steal valuable sun and nutrients from the soil. Today we are getting rid of the excess tasty Borage that has so generously volunteered itself all over the place. We will be trying this tasty bee food in a variety of ways this year and will keep you posted. Both the leaves and the fowers are edible and nutritious. We have several people picking these extra volunteers up today for their gardens and will probably have more than enough later in the season for those who are interested in trying this gardeners friend. Who can get enough of Tulips? I can't!!!! They are all doing their thing in the garden as well and I couldn't be happier. After having 2 years of bald patchy soil we are blessed with an abundance of blooms that the dog hasn't trampled yet. OH JOY!!!! The Pagoda Dogwood is lifting up it's beautiful leaves a...

Creating the infrastructure for and expanding the beauty of our garden was the first goal I had for the growing season. Towards the middle of spring I started to focus on the little helpers seen and unseen that helped our garden flourish. Those little helpers or Beneficial Insects as they're known in the gardening/scientific world included my top three which are bees, lady bugs, and praying mantis. We loved watching the mantis hatchlings scurry around their little make shift nest we hung around the window sill. I will write more about lady bugs and praying mantis in future posts but today I want to focus on the cute little fuzzy guys that lift an astounding amount of weight on such tiny little wings... Bees .  The first thing I decided to do when researching how to attract bees was to find out what kinds I could attract in my area which is Zone 4. I thought I would have the time to make a home to attract mason bees but ran out of the time and the drill I needed to make a cute li...