Tea Time

First of all I would like to share some good news. My dad was put on the cancellation lists for both his liver biopsy and the PetScan. The liver Biopsy is going to be tomorrow morning now and the petscan will take place in Edmonton Jan 4^th.  It has been a crazy rollercoaster of a week, but I think everyone is beginning to cope a little better now. It’s really hard not to jump to worst case scenario and picture future events where he isn’t around. However, I am getting better at it every day. To be honest I am pretty sure I am just stuffing my emotions down deep inside to be strong and that will bite me in the butt in the long run, but for now it is working.

Okay now for something completely different............tea! Are you a tea drinker? Well I am. I have never been a big fan of coffee. It doesn’t agree with my IBS and more often than not I get too wired off of just one cup to make it enjoyable.  I will have the odd cappuccino if it is in a nice shop or at home if I am not too lazy to grind the beans and start up the espresso machine. However, when it comes to tea I rarely turn it down.  I tend to stay more to the herbal side of teas, but occasionally I make an exception. I also prefer loose leaf to tea bags mainly for the reason that you can make some very interesting combinations on your own.

My top 10 favourite teas are

Camomile

Dutch Rooibos

Mint

Green tea

Orange Pekoe

Lavender

Jasmine

Lemon balm

Lemon verbena

Ginger

Last year I tried to grow some of my own herbs to make tea, but for the most part that didn’t quite work out..lol the camomile didn’t take, along with the lavender and Jasmine. The mint, lemon balm and lemon verbena did grow, but I did not harvest them correctly so at the end of the growing season I didn’t end up with a lot.

Mint and Lemon Verbena

The plan for 2013 is to create a tea section in the garden. At the front of the garden I always have trouble with weeds there, but growing my herbs in pots never works out the way I want it to. I was thinking of creating a section where I put down that weed control paper and then cover that with soil and plant my herbs. Has anyone tried that before? It might not give the herbs soil depth they need to grow, but it might work.

So those are my plans for a better 2013 tea time