The herb garden

I'm growing the neatest little herb garden.  I'm very pleased with the way it is working out.  One new plant that I've got growing, I had never seen before, but after some reading, I was quite intrigued.  It's called borage.  I've planted a bunch, but one has grown much larger than any of the rest.  It' comes up to my thigh, so it's tall.  Two days ago it produced it's first flower!

The borage has a lot of herbal medicine qualities.  It's good for coughs and stress.  Next time my kids get a cough, I'm going to try making a tincture with the borage leaves.  I've been reading about the borage and it has been used as a medicinal plant for centuries. 

 This is the beautiful flower of the borage.  It's blue about about the size of a penny.  The flowers are edible and can be used as a salad topper, dessert topper or frozen in ice cubes for drinks.  They sure are pretty little flowers.

I ate this one today.  I felt very silly pulling a flower of a plant and sticking the flower into my mouth, but I was given quite the little surprise.  The center of the flower is sweet! 

How does the garden grow?  Very, very well.  I've got peppermint, mint, lemon mint (bee balm), candy mint, borage, angelica, dill, lavender, chamomile, chives, basil and parsley.  The lemon mint is doing extremely well and has gotten very tall.  It was starting to take sunshine away from my basil, so I pulled a hand full of the lemon mint.

It has a mild lemon flavor to it.  Yes, I stuck one of the leaves from the lemon mint right into my mouth after pulling it from the ground.  If you know me, you will understand how odd this is.  I don't eat green things that grow in the ground.  Anyway, the leaf tasted a little like pine-sol.  I boiled some water, and dropped a few leaves into the water, creating an infusion.  I drank it.  Not bad.  A bit like pine-sol.  I've been reading about what to do with this lemon mint.  It can be used in poultry recipes.  Rosemary and lemon mint chicken.  Mmm.  Sounds pretty tasty.  I've got this batch hanging in my kitchen, drying. 

Well, that's a little about what is growing in my garden. It's very exciting!