One of Chicago's Best

Gosh, I hadn't realized it's been over a week since I last wrote.  I have been on an anti-new tea kick for some reason and some fine combination of lazy and doing too much.  However, I got some new teas in the mail and that has inspired me.  Today's is a Keemun "A" from the Chicago Tea Garden.  Sadly, they are closing, so they haven't got a lot of tea left.  It is all on sale, however.

The tea smelled lovely in the packet - a deep wineyness combined with a very nice good tobacco aroma.  I brewed it for 4 minutes with water just off the boil.  Now it has that lovely deep wine aroma coupled with something that reminds me of the smell of washing milking implements.  If you don't know, I grew up on a dairy farm and many of my "scent references" come from that time.  Hmmm, lovely tea taste that is very close to the aroma.  This is one fine cup of tea.  There's a bit of forest wood in it as well as the wine and tobacco, with some spice towards the end.  Excellent, excellent.

We are going on vacation on Sat. and so now I am trying to do all those things I should have done last week while I was admiring a rose garden and learning about old and antique roses.  My Master Gardener group went to see my friend Leon's rose nursery and we learned a lot.  Did you know there is a species of rose that grows up at the arctic circle?  Blows my mind.  I wish I could have more here, but between the deer and the soil, I guess three is my limit.  The deer ate off all the blooms on my newest rose last night.  See the gardener swear and get out the deer spray!

Did you know that woodpeckers like Hummingbird feeders and will drink the sugar water?  I heard it from 2 independent sources.  The downys, the hairys and the red-bellied are the culprits.  They are the three smallest here in the northeast, although the bill on the red-bellied isn't any too tiny.