Algonquin Tea Co

Uhh. I really REALLY hope that someone else has some of this because I only have 15g left, and this is the first time I’ve had it.

I like sage teas too. I’d be interested in that one because I’d be interested in how the sweet grass translatesinto tea. We had sweet grass in the garden when I was a teenager, non of the nurseries near here have it though.

Wow! Sounds interesting to say the least. My son will sometimes say things to us and we are like, “what?”. The one that sticks out the most in my memory was when he was probably 2 or 3 yrs old. We were on vacation, driving somewhere and he says something about it raining. Now we had checked the forecast and it was a nice sunny summer day with no rain in sight. Sure enough, not but a few hours later we drove through a downpour ! Where did that come from and how did he know? I have no idea. Now when he speaks up about something we always listen and take note.

I waited until I was at a “real” keyboard to respond to this again, because I hate typing long things on my iPad. A little background, I grew up in a religious household. My mother was (and still is) the church organist of a Southern Baptist Church. We were there every time the doors opened. As an adult I am pretty much agnostic. So I tend to lean more to science than metaphysical. BUT, there are so many things that can’t be explained that I always find myself very interested and leaving myself open to the idea that we don’t know it all/can’t explain it all, so my mind is open.

Now, I grew up next door to my grandparents. I had a mom, but my grandmother was effectively the mom. She was the one who was always baking and making Halloween costumes and all of those type things. I adored her and was at her house just about every day from the time I was born until I went to college. She was the most positive person I ever knew, and never said a bad thing about anyone. She certainly never dwelled on death or anything like that. So it was a surprise when she started talking about it quite a bit, for a year or so before her death. It’s as if she knew. She walked one of my aunts around her house and pointed out what things she wanted specific people to inherit (REALLY out of character). One day she scolded my grandfather for keeping so much of their money tied up in investments and said, “You haven’t left enough in our daily account to bury either of us.” There were several things like that that were just….really out of character.

My grandmother went into the hospital for a very minor procedure. She had a tear duct that was clogged and it needed to be cleared. She had it done at a hospital where my sister was a nurse, so after the procedure my sister went to see her in recovery, talked with her and then left the room. My grandmother had a massive stroke and was essentially gone moments later. My sister was the head nurse in neuro intensive care where they took my grandmother, so we were privy to some inside information, and her stroke was so massive and so unusual that it was studied at a national neuro conference that year.

This was, to me, the strangest part. She was kept alive for four days, and on the last day we had to make the decision to let her go. She had no will or living will, so there was no directive from her (this was 25 years ago, living wills weren’t as common as they are today). It was a wrenching decision and really hard for our family. But it was the decision we had to make. Afterward we went back to her house and started making coffee for the visitors. Inside one of her kitchen cabinets she had cut out a sample living will from a women’s magazine, signed it, and taped it to the cabinet door. It was dated within two weeks of her hospital visit.