Sunday, March 21, 2021
Tea House
Monday, March 8, 2021
Floral Mosaic Teapot
I love creating tea-themed art. Here is a recent piece. It is a mosaic using cut glass, cut china, and thrifted costume jewelry. I hope you like it!
Sunday, February 7, 2021
Rose teas and tisanes: A February treat
February
is the perfect month for drinking rose-scented teas or tisanes. The rose brings
to mind February’s major celebration of hearts and love, Valentine’s Day. We know that the heart and rose are both considered
to be symbols of love and romance, but they are so much more. These connections between roses and hearts,
and love run deeper than the images depicted on Valentine greeting cards
(which, by the way, have been printed and posted only since the early to mid-nineteenth
century).
The
rose carries many associations with love in the symbolic realm. For example, the red rose was associated with
Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. When the Roman empire later became
Christianized the rose came to be associated with the Virgin Mary. You can read about abundant symbolism
associated with the rose here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_(symbolism)
More
specifically, in regards to ties between the rose and the heart, consuming
rose-scented tea is considered to be good for the heart itself both physically
and energetically. Asheville herbalist,
Joanne Zerdy*, writes:
So, given the symbolic, physical and energetic ties between the rose and the heart I know that I will always consider February the perfect time to drink rose scented teas or tisanes. Pictured above is the rose scented black tea from Dobra Tea and the heart blend tea from Finlay’s Garden, both here in Asheville. I have been drinking both of these teas and you can too as all teas from these Asheville purveyors can be ordered online!
*Joanne Zerdy, PhD is a former university
professor in theatre arts who turned to herbalism and grief work following the
death of her son Finlay. Joanne completed a 1000-hour Herbal Immersion course
through the Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine and is particularly interested
in researching herbs for grieving and emotional healing. She puts her knowledge
into practice through her Finlay's Garden teas and
herbal honeys and through the grief work that she does through Inviting Abundance.
Monday, January 25, 2021
Unique Tea-Themed Collage Greeting Cards
Here is a small sampling of my new tea-themed collage cards!
Monday, January 4, 2021
Tea in the South Carolina Low Country
My family and I spent the past week in the South Carolina Low Country. Our time in that area is relaxing and familiar because we are natives of South Carolina and have vacationed regularly in the Charleston area for the past twenty years or so.
There are a number of sites in Charleston that would be of interest to any tea lover. The Charleston Tea Plantation, now called the Charleston Tea Garden, is a fun tourist site just outside of Charleston. And there are a number of places in the city where you can take an afternoon tea. (You can read about those through the South Carolina entries over at Destination Tea.) But there is a lesser known attraction in the area where you can hike forest trails surrounded by an understory of large, naturalized tea (Camellia sinensis) bushes. This lovely place is at the Caw Caw Interpretive Center, a part of the Charleston County Parks System.
My husband has done a great deal of historical research into the cultivation of tea in South Carolina. You can read about it on his blog post over at Brown Dog Press. In that blog post he recounts how tea bushes came to be on this land that is now the Caw Caw Interpretive Center. And according to the Caw Caw website there are now thousands of naturalized tea plants in the park.