Afternoon Tea Parties

Invite Guests -- Use Pretty Note Cards

Set Table -- With the Good China and Flowers

Boil Water -- Do Not Microwave

Steep Tea and Pour -- Sip Slowly

Take Time to Be Content with This Moment --Laugh

And Do Serve Yummy Things

Texture for Tuesday

Storm Clouds Brewing

Tea Leaves Before Brewing

Mist

Behold, God is great, and we know him not;
the number of his years is unsearchable.
For he draws up the drops of water;
they distill his mist in rain,
which the skies pour down
and drop on mankind abundantly.

~Job 36: 26-28

My view may be a bit different, this photo was snapped along the Blue Ridge during my last trip, but the weather this morning is this same foggy shade of drizzle. It is a morning made for mugs of tea and wooly socks and small furry dogs warming your lap while you type with one hand. This is Novemberish weather, snuggle down and stay cozy weather, go for a walk with the wind in your face and feel alive even as everything around you proclaims the cessation of summer weather.

As I stare out the window and warm my hands on my mug of tea, it seems to me that we are like the mists, here for a while and then the seasons change and we are gone. Do we water the land? Do we hug the mountains and rest amid His creation? Do we feel gratitude for every moment we are given -- even the rainy days? Or do we scatter, frenetic and fast-paced, seeking over hill and vale for the next thing to occupy us? Do we plan tomorrow at the expense of what the Lord would have us do today?

Come now, you who say,"Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." ~ James 4:13-15

Dill

Actually, that's a picture of a carrot flower, but dill is a relative with extremely similar flowers and seeds. Except that, in my opinion, dill seeds make better tea than carrot seeds.

The family Umbelliferae, defined as "plants having flowers in umbels: parsley; carrot; anise; caraway; celery; dill," contains both food plants, herbals, and poisonous weeds (poison and water hemlocks, for example).

Under the umbrella *wink* of the Umbellirerae are many plants:
There's a genus Seseli which is supposedly something called "moon carrots." I know nothing about them other than that they have an intreguing name; the genus Daucus provides our carrots.

Other genuses are also useful, Pastinaca includes parsnips. Apium is celery. Carum gives us caraway; and predictably Cuminum is cumin. The genus Petroselinum covers the parsleys. Pimpinella is, strangely, anise; and Anethum is dill -- which I am having this morning.

Dill is a useful herb for settling an upset stomach. As an herbal infusion, or tea (I take mine sweetened) it is very pleasant. Not at all like dill pickles -- which is what you were thinking, right? Dill pickles are good too, but, no, I don't take vinegar in my tea. Vinegar is an aide to digestion and combined with dill does make an excellent addition to the diet, but that's a topic for a different post.

Tudor Tea Stories

Have you been Here?
I agree with most of the things "Granny" taught Winslow Tudor, but today the thing that stands out to me is this:
"Never use tea bags, use real tea instead."
To which I might add: and a mug in the microwave is not the same as a nice pobbly teapot either.
I'm sure Tasha would have agreed with me.

Cup of Poetry

This morning I am sipping a cup of Wuyi Oolong tea. There is a mellowness about oolongs which black teas lack, and who could resist a tea billed as “The Cup of Poetry”? I love this tea. I also love obsessively researching insignificant details that most people don’t care about. That is why this morning, with my mug of poetry beside me, I surfed a few tea sites to learn this oolong’s history.

I learned that Song dynasty poets were enraptured over this [Chinese pronunciation] wulong tea as early as the eleventh century. Also known as Rock Tea, or Crag Tea, Yancha has a unique flavor known as Rock Rhyme (Yan Yun) because of the high mineral content on Wuyi Mountain where it is grown. “Crag bone floral fragrance” one website said the flavor is called.

The secret of Wuyi Oolong is its geographical location, the uniqueness of a small spot in China where the nine-bend Jiuqu Xi River meanders among deep gorges. Thirty-six peaks, ninety-nine crags, four thousand different plant species and the Var Bohea -- the Wuyi tea plant cultivated only in this biologists dream landscape.

Did I mention, I also learned that the place where I bought my “Cup of Poetry” grows their Oolongs in Taiwan. Taiwan. There is no Wuyi mountain in Taiwan.

My tea is not the miracle weight loss Wu-Yi that several websites gushed about. It is not the tea sipped in the Imperial Tea Gardens in the Fuijan province birthplace of Oolong Teas. My tea’s rich darkness is not characterized by the poetic history of cliffs and caves interwoven with watery ravines. It’s just a good cup of tea nothing more, but nothing less.

Blue Stocking Bee Balm

Bee Balm, or Monarda, is an excellent companion plant for the garden. A member of the Mint family, it spreads easily – unless you have the blue kind of this normally red flower. We have ‘blue stocking’ – it resents being asked to be blue and spread at the same time. But, as you can see, it’s still okay with attracting beneficial insects, and it doesn’t seem to mind dry clay soil. So really, who can complain?

Bee Balm is a lesser used herb, but has excellent antiseptic properties. It is a source of Thymol (like in Listerine) and can be used as a mouthwash and to treat minor scrapes. It’s also edible. Use the flowers in salads – I find you need to break them up or people usually pick them all out too easily.
I am informed that Monarda is excellent for seasoning wild game but have not tried this myself -- the wildest games I have in the kitchen are usually board games. ;-)

Also known as Oswago Tea or Bergamot, Bee Balm make an excellent tea. Blend with black tea for an earl-greyish taste, although this is not the Bergamot of Earl Grey fame; or go straight Bee Balmy for curing headaches and "the vapors." Just breathing the steam of boiling Bee Balm is said to be good for a sore throat, and it certainly smells nice enough to be worth trying that the next time I have a sore throat.

Quilts and Tea

Perhaps this has only been my experience, or perhaps it is true for others as well. Quilters drink tea. In Jeff Brumbeau and Gail de Marcken’s marvelous book The Quiltmaker’s Gift the quiltmaker who lives an idyllic live on the top of the mountains drinks blackberry teas and settles in to quilt. She pours tea for a bear and her teapot billows with her skirts from a rope tied round her waist when she is stranded on the tiny island. (That is one of my favorite of all the beautiful pictures in the book.)

Basically, she drinks tea. I drink tea too. I never acquired a taste for coffee, that bitter drug, but tea…

Green teas, black teas, oolongs, “sky between branches,” “cup of poetry,” “dragon’s well.” Who can resist the alluring scents of “blackberry sage” and “Moroccan mint;” who doesn’t love the image conjured by “monkey-picked oolong,” it’s irresistible. Okay, I’m not a fan of the smoky Lapsang Souchong, but it’s so fun to say I wish I did like it.

Sure, I’ve met quilters who also drink coffee, but tea always seems the beverage of choice. Am I wrong? Have I misunderstood; are they merely playing along with a woman obviously obsessed over tea? I don’t know, but I don’t think so. There’s teapot and teacup fabric on the shelves of the local stores, bolts of it. I’ve never notices any coffee mug prints. There’s even a quilt block called tea leaf and…. well, no, I suppose the Temperance T quilt block isn’t really T for Tea, so much as it is T for Temperance. But it could be, don’t you think?