ten on Tuesday

Today's question: what is your favorite summer beverage?

I could just list "tea" ten times. Really, I could. I force myself to drink plain water-with-lemon (or without) a few times a day, winter or summer, because I know it's a useful habit. Hydration, you know. But - my main fluid intake consists of tea. Perhaps I can say it in a more nuanced manner.

PG Tips tea, hot.

Yorkshire Gold tea, hot.

Joy tea from Tazo, hot. This blend is only available in December, so I buy a lot and hoard it.As of today, I have three bags left from a tin that was a gift. 

Shaken iced tea lemonade from Starbucks or Barnes&Noble - green, please, unsweetened.

Decaffeinated hot tea from The Republic of Tea:
     apricot black
     mango Ceylon, black
     ginger peace, black
  
Green tea with pear from the Republic of Tea.

Black decaf tea from Adagio, with apricot or strawberry.

plain water

(No, this isn't my teapot, but I do have and adore the Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman Evening With cd.)





Why so much decaf? Can you see me shaking my fist at my cardiologist? 

Cloud Tea Monkeys by Mal Peet & Elspeth Graham

Cloud Tea Monkeys by Mal Peet

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One day, a little girl's mother becomes too ill to pick tea on the cruel Overseer's plantation. Without the money, she will be too poor to see a doctor, but little Tashi is too small to take her place amongst the tea bushes. What can Tashi do? What will become of them?

Tashi has befriended the wild monkeys who are hated by the workers and Overseer, who daily beats a tin pot to drive them away. She is so upset that she shares both her lunch and her fears with the largest male, Rajah. She is dismayed when the monkeys take her precious basket and disappear into the mountains, so dismayed that she falls into an exhausted sleep amongst the youngest animals.

She awakens when the basket is returned, filled with leaves "the color of emeralds and spangled with tiny droplets of water so the basket seem(s) full of green light." The Royal Tea Taster, whose mustache is "like a spread of showy wings," is so delighted by the little girl's basket of cloud tea that he gives her a silk pouch with enough gold coins for the doctor her mother needs.

Each year thereafter, Tashi and her mother fill the basket with delicious fruit for the monkeys, and each year the monkeys fill the basket with "the magical green glow of cloud tea." 

Even without my lifelong enchantment with tea and its tales, I would have loved this book for its sensitive, gentle, witty prose, its drawings and coloured illustrations, and its aura of antiquity. According to the authors' note, "Cloud Tea Monkeys is set in the past, but you can still buy 'monkey-picked tea,' though whether or not it is really picked by monkeys is another story again..."

The reading level of this children's book is listed as Kindergarten to fourth grade, but I think it would be a shame if the elders amongst us passed it by.

View all my reviews >>

"If you can make a proper cup of tea..."

"If you can make a proper cup of tea, you can do anything" - an article by Phyllis Segura from Tricycle. Is that true? I wish ...

I haven't done much for the last few days except work and drink tea. Maybe a little knitting (some progress on a turquoise wrap I started last year, and a facecloth) - maybe a little reading (Songs Without Words by Ann Packer, which I will write about soon) - maybe a couple of letters written.

I spent too many days battling a throat infection without the benefit of antibiotics, but yesterday I gave up. My punishment: Antibiotics and steroids. What can I say? Bleah. (And even that, I only can say softly.)

I wish...

I wish I had the nerve to write, like my friend wrtmaus, about fear, and I wish I had the stamina to take this (from Tricycle's Daily Dharma) to heart:

Fear is finding fault with the future. If only we could
keep in mind how uncertain our future is, then we would
never try to predict what could go wrong.
Fear ends right there.

–Ajahn Brahm from Opening the Door of Your Heart (Lothian Books)

But today I have just enough energy to say shalom, hello, and namaste to my friends, readers, and passers by.

look over there!

I wish I could stay home today, drink tea, and knit. (Isn't that what I always wish?) Alas, I can't, since I have to work, but I do feel restless...

I've found more silent poetry in my wanderings... ancient Celtic poetry with Crazy Lanea, Ralph Waldo Emerson with MoonRani at Tea Reads, Robert Frost with Paula at Bassett Knitter, William Carlos Willilams with Jennifer at Craftylilly, and Phyllis McGinley with Bridget at The Ravell'd Sleave.

I also found a new idea for tea that I'd love to try: MoonRani's vanilla-almond-cherry tea. (Has anyone tried the honey she describes? It sounds very, very wonderful.) She also has a nice diversion in yesterday's post, and musings on peanuts here. (Sorry, I can't join you for peanuts. Allergic, you know.)


(Oh, I do wish I were home.)

Only this moment

"Drink your tea slowly and reverently as if it is the axis on which the whole world revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. Live in the actual moment. Only this moment is life."

• Thich Nhat Hanh.