Tea and Poetry

A nice picture I took and thought I would add to the post.

Anyone who reads this blog regularly (I am not sure if anyone does...), ought to know that I like writing poetry, they also ought to know that I like to write poetry about tea. To me, writing and tea just go naturally together. Tea keeps you focused and awake while you write. Poetry and tea go together even better, probably because tea is so poetic. Somehow; however it happens, a quarter of my poems seem to be about the same thing this blog is about...tea.  I think that turning the words that describe the taste in a tea into a poem is such a fun challenge. I makes me look at the tea differently, and at words differently. It makes the tea seem like a story, a story unlike any other. A story you can drink. And when you look for the poetry in a tea, you find so much, the symmetry and rythmn of the flavors and colors of the tea all seem to go together so beautifully that it seems as if you were drinking a poem. It makes you look at words and writing differently because you can suddenly drink a poem, and drink words.

The words of a tea

hidden so deep

when uncovered by me

a treasure they seem

A treasure to drink

a treasure to write

the words the link

to a story untold

Yet I tell it in poetry

though the silence unwritten

tells the greater story

of the people who grew

Those farmers who toiled

who tended and cared

let the tea grow unsoiled

and harvested with care

Who took the leaf raw

and for hours worked hard

to get out any flaw

and end up with a perfect tea

I hope you enjoy it! Please let me know if there are any people who read this blog regularly!

P.S. I just started a blog that is exclusively for my photography. Here is the link: http://chicken-little-photography.blogspot.com/

The "Accidental" Blend

  I had a can of Da Hong Pao oolong tea that the lid kept falling off of. I also had a large can of Silver Needle white tea with very little tea in it.
 
  So, after my Da Hong Pao kept repeatedly spilling (it somehow never all spilled), I without thinking much about the result, put the smaller tin with a lid that often fell off in the larger tin with a lid that I have never known to fall off. Well, probably needless to say, the next time I went to get some Silver Needle, I found instead some "Silver Da Hong Pao Needle" white oolong tea. In case you have never tried it, separating blended tea is very difficult. I tried to separate the two teas, and did not get very far before I gave up. So after thinking for about two seconds, it occured to me that I could just brew the "Silver Da Hong Pao Needle" white oolong tea, or for short The "Accidental" Blend.

  After brewing and trying The "Accidental" Blend, I decided I liked it much better than just Silver Needle or just Da Hong Pao. I would never have thought of mixing those teas together, but after mixing them together accidentally and trying them, I think this blend is now one of my favorites.

Note: Put together teas that you did not think would ever go together, and mix them together. You might accidentally come up with the best tea you ever tried. Or don't do that if you do not want to risk wasting tea.