The Courage of Borage

I love to walk in the forest at midsummer because there is a particular kind of stillness, a fullness. The trees know the sun has reached its peak and the days have already begun to shorten. There is no urgency now—only a deep, quiet satisfaction, like a lion stretched lazily beneath the midday sun.

Beneath the canopy, light filters through in countless shades of green, and everything feels suspended for a moment between flowering and seed. On this day the air held a simple clarity. As I walked the path down to the creek, I felt surrounded by a deep contentment.

There are actually very few flowers blooming in the forest at midsummer, as if most of the plants are divided between those drawn to the early warmth of the increasing spring sun, and those that gather the fullness of the midsummer sun before beginning to make their seed.

It wasn’t until I recently met borage for the first time that I realized this quiet season also has something important to teach us about courage.

My garden also carries this sense of midsummer satisfaction, although in a much different way. With a mishmash of both wild and cultivated plants beings gathered here together, it feels more like the excitement of chattering new friends celebrating together in the fullness of summer. Here among these flowers I celebrated a tradition new to me at the invitation of a friend.

Called Acqua di San Giovanni, or St. John’s Water, this solstice folk ritual is thousands of years old. We gathered flowers and herbs of all kinds at sunset and soaked them in a bowl of water overnight under the moon and stars to collect the dew, and then the next morning we used the water to wash our face and hands. It is believed that at the midsummer solstice the flowers and plants hold their greatest energy and fecundity and are charged with protective powers that bring good luck, health, beauty and protection from bad fortune for the year ahead. Such a lovely practice!

Among them was my new friend, borage, who has joined my garden this year to my great delight. A Mediterranean native, they have a long history of growing in our gardens and sharing their wisdom with us. Their bright blue, starry flowers rise abundantly above their light green fuzzy leaves on red furry stems that curve as if they are pulling themselves up from the earth and reaching for the sun.

The flowers and leaves are edible and taste just like cucumber. In medieval times they were famously known as the “herb of courage.” For thousands of years, their striking blue star-shaped flower has been prized by soldiers, physicians and poets alike for its uncanny ability to drive away sorrow and infuse the spirit with confidence. In the Middle Ages, borage flowers were used to create the specific celestial blue pigment used to paint the Virgin Mary’s robes. Pliny the Elder strongly believed that borage was the true botanical source of “Nepenthe,” the mystical potion described in Homer’s Odyssey that induced complete forgetfulness of sorrow. Interestingly, modern science finds that borage is rich in gamma-linolenic acid or GLA, a substance naturally produced in our bodies that stimulates adrenaline production and gives a surge of energy, elevating our moods.

I’ve wanted to grow borage for several years, but my previous attempts failed. This year they grew with ease, and I suspect will be with me as a self-seeding annual for many years to come. Did the borage know that I might need their courage most this coming year as I bring my work with the flowers out into the wider world?

When I think about borage being an annual—putting all of their life force into their flowers and seeds in a single year before they die back to the Earth—I feel they are telling us to hold nothing back.

How much courage does it take to trust everything you are to your seeds?

When I sat with borage and their bright blue star flowers, they said to me: “Rise up with us! Feel the breath of life filling you, drawn from deep inside the Earth. Take the space you need to share all that you are with the world. Open your throat, just as we open our brilliant blue flowers, and sing with us, no matter the weather. There is no time but now.”

What an invitation! Will you join me?

Mary Porter Kerns is the author of the forthcoming book, The Flowers Are Speaking: Listening to Nature’s Ancient Wisdom (Tarcher-Penguin Group, April 2027) that is an intimate journey into the entwined evolution of flowers and human beings—weaving together science, history, stories, and earth-based mysticism to offer a radical vision of how we can best reconnect with the intelligence of plants and the ancient guidance of the earth. In fall of 2022 she self-published the first edition of her oracle cards, also called The Flowers Are Speaking, that sold out in three months.

Her highly acclaimed workshops teach participants how to experience the flowers as she does through their own senses, intuition and imagination.