Tea, Beautiful Tea

Oh lucky me, another nice tea to chat about.  This is Adagio's Huang Jin (yellow flowers) Bolero.  This definitely calls to mind a very mixed bag of images, from the mountains of China to the heat of Spain, from the quiet of the tea fields to the opera.

The dry leaves are almost crinkled into balls and give off a gentle hayfield aroma, mixed with some floral.  The suggested brewing is for boiling water for 5 minutes.  I pretty much trust Adagio, so I do it.  It works!, even though this is a bit unusual for Oolong and not what you should do if you are going for multiple steeps.  The aroma has moved more into the often characteristic orchid smell, along with a bit of fruit. The tea is sweet and mild, with a floral/fruit taste.  There is also an unmistakable greenness to it, along with a hit of mineral.  Altogether very fine.

I finally got smart and decided to buy the squirrels peanuts.  Otherwise I would spend my life chasing them away from the bird feeders.  I put them and things for the ground feeders down near the squirrels' trees and it seems to work.  Even the turkey is happy.

We have pair of rose-breasted grosbeaks!  They are such beautiful birds.  As usual, the female is quite drab, but lovely in her own way, having a multitude of browns and speckles.  There are many sparrows and I am having a hard time distinguishing them all, as they don't sit still in good enough poses.  The fur persons seem to have given up bird chasing for mice and voles.  I am happy with that.  The little downies are beginning to look a bit raggedy.  Parenthood is a lot of work!  Sometimes they just sit on the suet, apparently having a breather.  I wonder if the male is a bit of a cross, as he seems to have a lot of touches of yellow on his head, wings, tail and body.  Hmm.  If you are interested in birds, the Cornell site www.allaboutbirds.org  is a great one

An old coaching inn that was moved to Ballenberg museum.  The stables were in the building to the left. Ballenberg is trying to save as many historic Swiss buildings as they can.  The museum is divided into the regions of the country.  We only got to see the Bernese Alpine region, where my grandparents came from.  The house my grandfather grew up in was built in 1572, but remains in the village it was in, now converted into apartments.

The end of (my) Ten Ren

This lovely old barn is from the Ballenberg Outdoor Museum in Switzerland. The Swiss have gathered up over a hundred old structures and preserved them in a huge park which would take days to see. They have costumed folk who interpret and are busy doing old crafts, making foods, caring for historical breed animals. It is a lot like Williamsburg in that respect. There will be number of pictures from there to follow.



I guess our flirtation with summer is over. We went out last night at 81 degrees and came home to 47! It is cold, damp and gray today. It is supposed to freeze tonight, so I cut some of the half-open magnolias to bring in so I can enjoy them. If it does freeze, they will be brown slime in the morning. It absolutely poured, so I brought in bunches of squashed daffodils as well and they perked right up.


Naturally, when one is chilled, one's thoughts turn to tea. I had 2 more Ten Ren tea bags from my swap friend, so I thought I might as well finish them. The first is called Ten Wu. Again, it is a paper bag, but there is no gusset. I brewed it as usual at about 190 degrees for 3 minutes. I loved the smell, vegetal with a floral and cream overlay and what I can only call an Asian base note – that scent that reminds me of Asian markets. This seemed like a heavy Oolong, with acidic or bitter notes along with the creamy ones. I liked that about the tea. Sometimes oolongs are just too light-weight and today was cold enough a sturdier tea seemed better.


The last of these Ten Rens for the moment is a Ti Kuan Yin. There is a definite smell of orchids from the brewing tea, which I love. The liquor is a medium amber – much darker than I expected. It is also a much more heavily roasted Oolong than I care for. It tasted heavily vegetal, with some sort of nutty tanned leather accents. Not for me, although I know many others prefer these more roasted Oolongs. I guess a medium roast is as far as I want to go.