the mighty borage

This plant grows fast and huge. For comparison, borage leaf next to some volunteer cosmos.

Here's a picture from several weeks ago in the garden-

and a week later- you can see how it's doubled in size- and it's even bigger now! (Other plants- far left spot is my daughter's space- front to back: borage, volutneer cantaloupe, cherry tomatoes, peas. Her pea plants look better than anything I've ever grown- and she made a decent little support for them to climb out of sticks and twine. Middle spot: borage, swiss chard, little cesar lettuce, simpson lettuce, more borage in the back corner. Right spot: huge two-year-old borage fallen over, little cesar lettuces and some faltering chard, rosemary).

The blue drooping flowers are so pretty-

but the tall stems collapsing and it's kind of looking messy. A few days ago I cut all these stems back- was planning to dry the flowers inside to collect seed. It didn't work out that way. I found it was crawling with bugs- aphids mostly, I didn't want them spreading to houseplants. So I cut off all the leaves and stored in a ziploc in the fridge (to get bugs off later for fish food) and clipped just the flowers to dry in a sealed paper bag.

Younger plants are plenty robust- here's the start of more flowers coming.

Borage flowers drying- like dandelions, the seeds seem to finish maturing even after they are cut off. It's a prickly, space-hogging plant, but I still love it.