Giveaway Winners!

A big thanks to Two Leaves and a Bud for co-hosting such a fun giveaway - and thanks to all who entered. The winner of the grand prize is Deb! The winners of the sample packs are Suburban Prep and Milton! Congratulations to all three and I know you'll enjoy your wonderful tea - I'd love to hear about your favorites!


Hope your weekend includes a few nice cups of tea!

Two Leaves, One Bud, Three Giveaways

"I don't drink coffee, I take tea, my dear" -- Sting, from 'Englishman in New York'

Feeling a bit blah after the excitement of the holidays? Here's something that will perk you up - a Tea Giveaway, well, actually three giveaways! I'm so excited to host these giveaways with the fabulous folks at Two Leaves and a Bud! Their premium, whole leaf organic teas are delish and if you haven't already discovered them, you're in for a treat.

The grand prize, shown above, is a large sampler with four types of tea - black, green, white, and herbal. The lucky winner will receive 15 sachets of each type (a $35 gift). The Two Leaves and a Bud sachets are wonderful. The combination of whole leaf tea and the sachet's pyramid shape gives you an excellent cup of tea - you'll never go back to dusty, flat tea bags once you've tried these!

Two Leaves and a Bud will send two lucky runners-up 15-sachet sampler packs - perfect for deciding which teas are favorites and for expanding your tea horizons a bit!

Here's how to enter:

Visit the Two Leaves and a Bud website and check out their teas - then leave a comment here telling me which of their teas is your favorite.

For additional entries, you may do one (or more) of the following and leave a comment telling me which thing you did (leave one comment per item as the comment is your entry):

• Become a fan of Two Leaves and a Bud on Facebook at www.facebook.com/twoleavesandabud
• Sign up to follow Two Leaves and a Bud on Twitter, at www.twitter.com/twoleavestea
  
• Join the Two Leaves and a Bud T-mail club by visiting their website (www.twoleavesandabud.com), big bonus here - you'll get a 10 percent off coupon code for your next order just for signing up!
• Sign up for an RSS feed of their blog, by visiting www.twoleavesandabud.com/blog
  
  

Entries will be accepted until midnight EST on January 14 (sorry, but you must have a US shipping address to enter). The three winners will be announced on Friday, January 15! (If you don't have a blog or profile with an e-mail address, please leave your contact e-mail info in your comment so we can contact you if you win.)

Good luck!

All photos courtesy Two Leaves and a Bud.

Red Alert! Put the Kettle On! ~ Monty Python

Even if Monty Python's humor is not your cup of tea, you can appreciate this funny quote from a Pepperpot Ladies sketch. And, of course, if you're a tea lover like me, you like a nice cup of tea even when you're not under a Red Alert! This past week I've been trying a variety of teas from the Two Leaves and a Bud tea company and can highly recommend their sachets of organic teas.

There is a caveat; I'm not a professional tea taster, and I don't even play one on television! So, these are the thoughts of someone who loves tea (hot and cold) and drinks several cups each day (sometimes even several pots!). Even though I have attended a few tea tasting seminars, I will not attempt to use the lingo as it would probably just reveal how much I don't know! But, here's my opinion of the seven teas I've tried thus far:

Peppermint (Herbal, caffeine free) - Any fan of peppermint tea will love this! It's a light golden color with a heavenly minty fragrance and it leaves just a hint of a peppermint bite on your tongue. This is just the thing to pep you up when you're tired - very refreshing and energizing! Stock up now to get you through the holidays . . .

Darjeeling (Afternoon Tea) - I'm partial to Indian teas and always enjoy a nice Darjeeling. Did you know it's grown in high-altitude Himalayan foothills? If you're interested in different tea regions, check out the map at Two Leaves and a Bud - it's interactive and you'll be able to see where your favorite teas are grown. But, back to the Darjeeling - it was a beautiful golden color as seen below, with a nice, clear taste. I would be happy sipping this every afternoon!

African Sunset (Red Tea) - I wish I'd taken a photo to show you how beautiful this tea is. It's red (!) and tastes more organic than black or green teas - kind of woody or shrubby and a bit lemony. It's very nice and I think you could get hooked on it!

Mountain High Chai (Spiced Black Tea) - This was my least favorite of the seven. It has a great spicy fragrance, but the flavor was a bit diluted (I steeped it for 3 minutes as suggested, perhaps a minute or two more would have helped). I don't typically add milk to my tea and I suspect this was the problem and that Mountain High Chai would be great with milk (like the Chai you get in Indian restaurants). So, while I would not pick this as a favorite, you should try it for yourself (with milk, of course).

Pomi-berry (Herbal, caffeine free) - This is a nice Chamomile tea blended with pomegranate, apple, lavender, hibiscus, and lemon grass (and, no, I couldn't distinguish all those flavors on my own - I checked the TLAAB website). I really do not like Chamomile, but I liked this. It's sweet and fruity and the pomegranate balances out the Chamomile flavor.

Tamayokucha (Green Tea, light caffeine) - This tea is a beautiful light green/brown color with a subtle flavor. I liked the taste very much, but the fragrance was a bit grassy - keep in mind that I much prefer black tea to green . . . If you're a green tea fan, I think you will be quite pleased with Tamayokucha!

Assam (The Original Breakfast Tea) - Loved it! I start most mornings with either an Assam or Formosa Oolong and this Assam was perfect. It was a dark golden color with a nice robust flavor - just what I needed to wake up, but not at all bitter. If you like breakfast tea, you'll love this!

To steal a line from Dorothy Parker, who famously reviewed Katherine Hepburn's performance by saying she, "ran the whole gamut of emotions from A to B" - these Two Leaves and a Bud teas run the whole gamut from excellent to just . . . very good.

Check out the Two Leaves and a Bud website for lots of great teas, info, and tea gifts!

Disclosure: I received free tea samples as described above to review. Two Leaves and a Bud did not compensate me for reviewing their product beyond providing me with samples.

Garden 2009: Lessons Learned

This gardening year is winding down and it's time to take stock and see what worked and what didn't and to present a few awards. I have to start with this picture, taken on a beautiful June morning. My battles with the local deer gang overshadowed every other aspect of gardening this year - you can see how brazen they are . . . walking through our yard in broad daylight, pausing to nibble the grass along the way.

Lesson #1 - So, the big lesson learned here is that you can't ever let your guard down. We've found deterrents that work, but only when you consistently use them. The biggest heartbreaks in this department were the night they devoured our whole garden and discovering that they love Knockout Roses, thorns and all. (And on a personal note, next year I will NOT yell and throw things at them - at least not while the neighbors are at home!)

Lesson #2 - Vines are wonderful. This one was particularly fun as the hummingbirds loved its tiny flowers - and it grew from the ground to the top of our upstairs porch, and then kept going by spreading over the ceiling. I've already harvested seeds from it!

Lesson #3 - You can never have too much compost!



Lesson #4 - Stop planting tulips. Accept that daffodils are the only bulbs that will survive the squirrels. You will never have tulips like these Biltmore beauties. Repeat. Stop planting bulbs!


And now for the 2009 Garden Awards!

Best Dressed - the hands-down winner is 'Miss Huff' - a lovely lantana that's full of color from late May until October. She requires no water, no fertilizer . . . and the bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds love her!

Most Whimsical - this award goes to this adorable cucumber tendril!

Most Likely to Succeed - the clear winner is this caged hydrangea. It lived in this not-so-attractive cage throughout the spring and summer and is now thriving, unlike its un-caged counterparts who were chomped to the ground by you-know-who! Next year it may win Best Soundtrack with the hit "I Know Why the Caged Plant Blooms".

That's it for the garden. We're on to winter color now - lots of berries and birds and a few trees that are holding on to their leaves.

On a different note - here are the latest teas I'm tasting: Pomi-Berry (which is a caffeine-free chamomile blend), Mountain High Chai, White Peony, and a Tamayokucha, a green tea. Check back this weekend for full details on these teas from Two Leaves and a Bud!

Happy Friday!!

Word Up! Please don't unfriend me just because I'm intexticated!

No, this isn't a blogosphere tell-all about Facebook friends who turn on each other. Rather, it's a cheery tale about a word who struggled all year and was finally rewarded. The word? Unfriend. The reward? Being selected as the New Oxford American Dictionary's Word of the Year! If you're one of the 115 million monthly visitors to social networking sites, you already know the definition of unfriend. For the rest of us, it sounds rather ominous - like something that might be pasted onto a blank page and slipped through the letter box on a dark night:

Actually it's a verb meaning to remove someone as a social networking friend. There were other great words in the running for the Word of the Year. Here are some of my faves:

• intexticated - distracted while driving due to texting
• funemployed - turning your unemployment into something fun
• tramp stamp - tattoo on a woman's lower back

I didn't make these up - these are real words that have been added to the dictionary. Who knew? Thinking back to school days - can you use these new vocabulary words in a sentence? There are some nice possibilities . . .

On the tea front, yesterday I mentioned that I am trying different varieties of tea from Two Leaves and a Bud. Today I'm going with a Red Tea (a la The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency) and a Peppermint Tea (because I'm feeling a bit tired). Over the weekend we'll chat about the teas I've tried thus far.

Hope you discover a few new words this week - maybe one that will become next year's WOTY!

Civilization in a Cup: A Tea Journey Begins

There is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

So, guess what's in my tea chest? Lots of organic tea from Two Leaves and a Bud - the Colorado tea company with the see-through tea sachets. Over the next few weeks, I will be reviewing a variety of teas from Two Leaves and a Bud and will move out of my Black Tea Comfort Zone to explore green teas and herbal teas. This must be how Marco Polo felt . . .

Today I'm starting with two familiar teas: Assam and Darjeeling. But, before the kettle is even going you notice the unique packaging. Obviously these are not the dusty tea bags found in many office breakrooms - these are tea sachets enclosed in a see-through envelope. If you haven't tried tea in a sachet you must - the sachets are made of a silky fabric and are constructed so that the leaves have plenty of room to expand. Again, very different from the flat, compact bags your grandmother used! Not all sachets are created equal, though, and one very exciting thing about TL&AB is that the tea in the sachets is the same premium, organic tea offered in their loose tea cylinders.

So, I'm off to enjoy a yummy cup of tea and will leave you with some tea inspiration: Paul Gauguin's Still Life with Teapot painted in 1896 and now found in the Metropolitan Museum's European collection.

Disclosure: I received free tea samples as shown above to review. Two Leaves and a Bud did not compensate me for reviewing their product beyond providing me with samples.