6 on Saturday – 13JUL2024

Chris Mousseau

‘Remnants’ of Hurricane Beryl passed through the area on Thursday, leaving behind four inches of rain but, unlike other areas on the continent, no death or damage. (More than a million people near Houston, Texas, have been without electricity since Monday!) It’s rare for us, so far inland and so far north, to experience these sub-tropical hurricane events – remnant or not – but forecasters are predicting more Atlantic hurricanes than normal this year (I think ‘normal’ is a shifting target these days, though…) so who knows what the next few months will bring.

My low tech rain gauge

Right now it’s time for Six on Saturday – Jim at Garden Ruminations hosts this weekly tour of gardens around the world. I’m going to start with Borage. There were six seeds in a $2.95 packet; all six were planted directly in the garden mid May and are now in prolific bloom. Everyone says they’ll self-seed like crazy, and I should be eating/brewing the flowers/leaves – but I’m not there yet. I’m just enjoying the gorgeous blue flowers and the magical effect created in certain light conditions from the tiny hairs on stem and flower.

Something else started from self-sown seeds are these cup plants – Silphium perfoliatum. These are taller than me right now, and are growing here thanks most likely to a bird-spread seed. It’s next to the sump pump outlet making the ground very moist at certain points of the year (ie when hurricane remnants provide a good day’s rain) – something these plants love.

More than six feet -2 metres – high

This trumpet lily, ‘Beijing Moon,’ has just started to open. It has a heavenly fragrance.

No fragrance from these San Marzano tomatoes in the kitchen garden, but I do love the smell of tomato leaves as I brush by them, or prune them off the stalk.  It’s an interesting year for tomatoes – enough rain to make the leaves lush and get the fruit plump, but a cool start that delayed the flowers, I think.

Two oranges now – Dahlia ‘Creamsicle’ and Tithonia – the annual Mexican Sunflower. It’s just the one Tithonia flower so far but in a few weeks, and through August and September, the three plants I started will get huge and very orange; monarch butterflies love them!

Finally, the drumstick Alliums I set as the featured photo up top.  Allium sphaerocephalon is one of the last ornamental onions to bloom in my garden. They’re easy to grow and delightful in patches scattered here and there throughout the garden. I’m including this final photo even though it’s out of focus because of the huge pollinator I chanced upon – a great golden digger wasp – Sphex ichneumoneus. This is a fascinating insect – solitary, fearsome looking but harmless to people and pets – the female digs tunnels in sandy soil to lay her eggs and store food (other live insects that have been stung and paralyzed) for her hatching offspring to eat.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

20 Comments

  1. I have had many of the Sphex wasps in my garden, both ichneumoneus and pennsylvanicus. The latter, the Great Black Wasp, has a very erratic flight pattern that feels aggressive, but they are also not interested in humans. Now I fear for my katydid. They love grasshopper type insects for their hungry larvae!

    Borage does have a lovely color. I have heard of people freezing the flowers in ice cubes to make fancy ice for parties. Beryl did not drop any rain on us, but we should be getting some rain later today.

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  2. Ooh,… San Marzano toms, the tithonia and this lily ‘Beijing Moon’, are my top 3 this week! I look forward to eating my tomatoes regularly. I only have one from time to time…but it’s in progress!

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    1. My eating/snacking/salad tomatoes are many weeks from eating – for some reason they were very slow to take off this year. The San Marzano’s though will soon be in freezer bags, to be added to sauces and stews this winter!

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  5. Gorgeous color for the Borage…just think, you could make your own seed packages! I had that thought when 25 organic Morning Glory ‘Pinwheel Blend’ for $2.69 produced 100’s of seeds. Very pretty Lily! Enjoy your tomatoes. Two chipmunks are ravaging my 6 plants…now using Liquid Fence, sprayed on rags, on the tomato cages…they’re still stealing tomatoes….or ‘naturally foraging’ as my adult daughter calls it. Insects are amazing & so many are harmless.

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    1. LOL – the rain WAS beneficial, and although there’s loads of baby rabbits this year, there are also loads of coyotes. At eat, that’s what I think the rabbits haven’t yet discovered my borage. It’s early though!

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  7. Borage! I was supposed to try it this year, but did not. However, I recently acquired some expired seed that I put out to possibly grow before the end of summer. It is from last year, so a few are likely still viable. I need no more than a few. Even if they do not grow much before autumn, they can survive through winter here. If I shove the overwintered plants a bit deeper into the soil at the end of winter, they can grow through next year. Although its allure escapes me, I want to try it to see what all the fuss is about. It is too popular with the right garden enthusiasts for its appeal to not be justified.

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    1. I think much of the hullabaloo about Borage comes from the medicinal and culinary attributes it is said to have. Adding to it is how attractive it is to pollinators plus, as I mentioned how lovely the blue flowers and hairy foliage is.

      Hope your seeds sprout – mine germinated quite quickly.

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      1. Still, the allure (or at least that sort of allure) escapes me. There are plenty of better vegetables to grow, and plenty of interesting flowers to add to salads. For me, the appeal is that it reminds me of other gardens that are prettier than mine. Perhaps it can make my garden pretty also. I saw pictures of white blooming borage, and although white is my favorite color, I prefer the typical blue. (It would be AWESOME to grow a bunch of blue, and get one or two that bloom white!)

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  8. I’m glad Beryl mostly behaved herself while visiting! Things slowly are returning to normal down here, but it’s going to be a while before true ‘normal’ shows up. As these things go, we’ll probably get cleaned up just in time for the next one.

    I think of Borage as a tea party in a plant. The leaves are cucumber-ish (finger sandwiches, anyone?) and the flowers are sweet, like little tea cakes!

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    1. Before I was born a hurricane roared up from the Carolinas hitting Toronto dead on, killing 645 people along the way, in the Caribbean, the U.S. and here. As a result of this toll, the name ‘Hazel’ was retired from the list of hurricane names. I’ve seen many photos of its destruction, as well as news footage from more recent hurricanes of course, and I can only imagine what those experiencing them must go through.

      I’m so glad life is getting back to ‘normal,’ until, as you say, the next one.

      What a lovely image – Borage as a tea party!

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