What is my tea even going to taste like?
Ok, so I can't plant like...actual tea, or ginger, or cinnamon, or anise, or cloves. And I don't like chamomile, echinecia or lavender.
So what kind of tea can I garden?
My main ingredient is gonna be New Jersey Tea. Fresh, this tastes like wintergreen which...no thanks. BUT dried, which is the main way I would use it, it's supposed to taste like black tea, but kind of smokey with hints of cinnamon and orange. So far so good.
Anise Hysop is meant to taste like mint with anise (licorice) notes.
Geum tastes like cloves and a little bit like cinnamon.
Rugosa roses have the most flavor of all the rose hips, supposedly, and taste lightly floral and also like citrus.
Lemongrass tastes like mild citrus with a hint of ginger.
Safflower: mellow, slightly nutty taste, but makes your tea pretty and adds a bit of base-note flavor.
Bee Balm: like a particularly refreshing mix of mint, basil and oregano.
Honeysuckle: Ok, so they say Japanese honeysuckle is the kind you ought to make tea out of for the best flavor. But it's wildly invasive, and we have highly scented native varieties that work with my color scheme, so we'll be going with those. I've read that it actually tastes like a floral-leaning green tea with sweet aftertaste, and some people say there's hints of vanilla in there, to.
I'm also hoping to put some Canadian wild ginger into the garden once it establishes- but it's a very sunny spot, so I have to wait for the other plants to establish well enough to bring this plant the shade it needs. This is supposed to taste a lot like tropical ginger, but without the spicy notes. (Note that this plant shouldn't be straight up eaten. It does contain toxins if you're gonna nosh it instead of briefly soaking it in water. Don't forage something and then get mad at me.)
All in all, I feel like it's going to be a fun experiment to play with the recipe combining these elements into a delicious tea. But the flavors are all there to make this super tasty.
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Ryou and Anzu:)
Ryou's favorite animal is a tapir
Anzu's are hamsters
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“Don’t throw away your suffering. Touch your suffering. Face it directly, and your joy will become deeper. You know that suffering and joy are both impermanent. Learn the art of cultivating joy. Practice like this, and you come to the third turning of the Third Noble Truth, the “Realization” that suffering and happiness are not two. When you reach this stage, your joy is no longer fragile. It is true joy.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation
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This summer is unmercifully short and cold. The warmth arrived late and is gone already, washed away by daily rain. The weather forecast brings no hope and I am trying to make peace with a thought that that might be all we get this year.
When it stops raining for a bit I’ll go and harvest the rest of my camomile flowers. They look like tiny suns to me and I’d like to imagine that I drink sunshine with every sip of camomile tea.
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