Taiwanese Wild Mountain Black

Good Morning!!!

I gotta remind myself to try this one when its back!

Awesomeness!

Told. You. So.

Lol! Sometimes short reviews are the most expressive!

you guys sound a bit like Christian Grey ;) just joshin’

LOL, speaking of Mr Grey, Tony & I were dog sitting his best friend’s dog, who’s name is Mr Grey. Tony decided to nickname him ‘G Dog’, & I nicknamed him, “Fifty Shades”. He responds to both, LOL. He’s a Jack Whippet, BTW.

ha!

Oh BTW, Mr Grey isn’t named after the book, he is named after the bad guy in the movie ‘Dreamcatcher’, so Dan, his daddy, calls him ‘mistew gwey’, doing an ‘i Duditz’ imitation. I love that movie.

This one is awesome!

This is also how I felt! I can’t wait for it to come back.

The way everyone describes this, I feel like it’s a mystical unicorn in the distance that I can’t catch. lol!

that’s how golden fleece was when i first joine steepster…. now it’s this one.

When I first joined steepster (labor day weekend, was it really only 8 months ago?), Golden Fleece was as unattainable as it’s name implied. A few months in, David included a sample in one of my verdant orders. Then it became available (& yes, I’m still hoarding some). This Wild mountain black was similar. I was on an ordering haitus because I’d gone so crazy over the Holidays & to keep myself under control I didn’t even look at tea websites (that would be like an alcoholic going into a bar to order a glass of milk…). By the time I knew about this tea, & went to the Butiki site to order some, it was gone!! ;_;
Luckily, Sil, the wonderful awesome Sil, sent me a sample!
(((Gives Sil a big Hug))) Thanks!
Now I too can wait for it’s return!

what ? it isn’t available anymore ? nooooooooooooo Stacy !!! is there any chance to see it back ? it may depends on the season ?

Ysaurealla – she’s trying to get more in for July/August. So stay tuned :)

thanks Sil , I will sure ! :)

Ysaurella-Yep, Sil is right. I’m just waiting until the next harvest. July/August couldn’t be soon enough. I miss this tea.

I was hoping you’d like this one since you don’t find many unflavored blacks that you like. :)

and you were right having this intuition, Nicole – thanks again :)

….and that is why there are lots of teas! :)

True that, we all have different tastes!

I reread this and I think I’m sounding like when I try to explain that a some Doctors (fromDctor Who) are great, but they’re not MY Doctor. :-)

Regarding tea: My tastes also change so that one day a tea knocks my socks off, & another day I might not feel that way about it.

Regarding Dr Who: I doubt that I’ll ever love a Dr as much as I loved David Tennant, & I’ll probably have to sign up for cable this fall, even though I almost only ever watch TV at Tony’s house, because I’m getting tired of watching episodes of the Dr. on the internet. The reception tends to be iffy, & it’s just not the same.

@ terri….i just buy them on blu ray and wait a WHOLE year while other ppl watch it live lol then i can watch 5 episodes back to back if i am so inclined lol

I’ve been watching Doctor Who on Amazon Prime and I’m s frustrated that the second half of Season 7 is not free yet. Grrrr!

I grew up watching Doctor and my favorite is Troughton. Everyone’s always asking me “Which Doctor?”

nice to see you back Kittenna !

Hi! Hi Kittenna!

This one is delicious

Thanks guys! Going to try and make more of an effort to log teas. I have a huuuuge backlog of teas I’ve drank but not logged. Haha.

hahahahaha and a huge number of teas still to drink ;)

Don’t remind me! :’(

Oh god… shudder. I once woke up and there was a spider looking at me from the other pillow. I don’t think I’ve ever flown out of bed so fast! I couldn’t sleep again until I’d washed all my bedding

Oh I HATE when that happens. My place has loads of windows I like to keep open for loads of fresh air, but the side effect is the constant terror of finding a giant spider on the ceiling! :(

I’m laughing into my tea, but I’m laughing WITH you – not at you. I don’t mind spiders. I mind snakes. And scorpions, I really really really mind scorpions. A scorpion bit me in my bed one time. I don’t kill things either but I really wanted that scorpion OUT of my house.

I’d move all the furniture out of that room and vacuum everything! lol

They say you swallow 8 per year. Okay I couldn’t resist. I have a healthy respect for spiders. They do a good job at what they are here for, but man could they be anymore creepy looking? Spiders don’t bother me nearly as much as other bugs. For the most part it seems like they really just want to leave you alone. On the tea front, this is one of my favorites. I need to enjoy another cup of this in my near future and try not to think of spiders while drinking it.

Mj: that is scary!!!

Sami, don’t you have nets in your windows?

Ok, MzPriss, that is no fun…scorpions and snakes? And how did you ever deal with a scorpion bite? Shivers here. I guess there are perks to be living in Winterland!!

Lol, Ubacat, I don’t think that spider “fits” in my vacuum!!!! (Ok, maybe I exaggerate a little…)

TeaTiff….not funny. Did.not.need.to.know.that.
And yes, the tea is spectacular!

My inner Buddha has found the perfect solution – I scream like a little girl until my warrior wife slays the evil beast. Seriously, I don’t do spider. They can be all useful outdoors. Once they are in the house their only purpose is to return to the dust.

I just snorted some of my tea into my nose @KS that is funny!

The scorpion bite bite HURT. Really hurt. And the way I dealt with the snakes and scorpions is that I moved out of the country and into the city where I haven’t ever seen either one. Although I hear a snake occasionally visits the garden. I haven’t seen it so I don;t have to move again. Yet.

Love it, KS! Superanna, my daughter, isn’t allowed to kill spiders because she and her husband are equally freaked by them so he insists on doing the killing because he is afraid she will miss and it will get away and come back for revenge.

I have always kept a “kitchen spider” as long as it stays in its place. We get moths otherwise. And when we find a spider elsewhere, youngest insists it must be captured and carried outside. We once had to relocate a baby copperhead to keep her happy….

OMG “relocate a baby COPPERHEAD???”

My standard response to spiders is to scream like a girl and get either my mom or husband to kill it for me. This sometimes is difficult, as it seems in my house that the shower is the preferred lurking spot for our spiders. Once, last month, when I was sick, I was just so tired and pissed off that I left the spider on the shower curtain while I was washing up – better than tracking a frenetic trail of suds throughout the house!

Thank you for the spider warning. As curious as I am to your response to this tea I’ve avoided reading your review and all comments to avoid being traumatized this early in the morning ;)

I’m arachnophobic. I have so many stories that I wrote an essay about my phobia. I think what I currently hate about spiders the most is that there are species that eat birds and/or bats. Number one: I love birds and bats. Number two: those spiders are monstrously biiiiiig ;^;

@ Christina, I actually let a spider live in my shower for a while as long as he kept a respectful distance. I live at “garden level” which is a nice way to say halfway underground, so bugs are a problem for sure. My spider shower seems to have moved on though. As long as they’re not in my bedroom, I’m ok with them.
@KiwiDelight: I love bats too! I tried to convince my parents to build a bat house in their backyard to help the brown bats, which are being decimated by this fungal infection. They live in Florida, so I told them that the bats would help with the mosquitos, but they wouldn’t go for it :-(

Well, that’s terrifying. shudder

@mj Oh no those poor bats! I didn’t know Florida had the fungal problem also. Maybe if you told them bats don’t harm humans, even animals :(

I love bats. Awesome creatures. Snakes, I respect, but I’m not afraid of them. Spiders, I know its irrational and I don’t care. One day my wife came flying up out of the basement to grab a ball bat and the bug spray. As she ran by she yelled, “Don’t go down there!” Apparently there was a big hairy one nearly the size of a tarantula on the wall. She knew had I gone down there we would be moving – immediately.

@KiwiDelight, yes because my parents live in the panhandle of Florida. I don’t think they have the fungus problem in Southern Florida. I did tell them that the bats won’t hurt anything but bugs, but they still declined. It’s ok, I’ve already had a discussion with my boyfriend and he’s agreed that when we A. move in together and B. have a yard, that I can keep a beehive and have a bat house :-)

I have severe arachnophobia. Like one time this little ant sizes one was web stringing it’s way down towards me and I was so paralyzed by fear and I was yelling at my boyfriend to get and he couldn’t see it and I started crying. He finally found it and I just couldn’t stop crying.

I’ve also made him pull over on the side of the road while I had a panic attack in the street in the middle of the night because I saw one crawl across the window and he couldn’t find it. I sat in the backseat knees up rocking and crying until we got where we were going.

I used to tape my mouth shut every night when I was a little girl because my mom thought it was a good idea to tell me that you eat an average of 8 a year.
I skipped school one day when I was in middle school because I saw one by the front door and it ran away before I could spray it to death so ran into the bathroom, shoved a towel along the bottom of the door and sat on the counter until my little sister found it and killed it.
Even the idea if a spider can set me off. One time I was sitting on the couch with my now ex, and thought it would be funny to stop and stare sort of freaked out at my neck like there was somethig there. So of course I freaked out, jumped up ad clawed at my neck. As of course started crying. I couldn’t stop even when he said nothing was there. It took almost an hour for the adrenaline to wear off so I could stop crying.

I’m not the type of person to cry, in fact the only times in the last year that my boyfriend has seen me cry have been spider related. I would love nothing more than to get over my fear but even thinking about going through the therapy makes my heart race.

Also I will never be able to drink this tea since you made that comparison.

KS The great thing about having a family or living with someone is that you can make them take the spider away.

mj Sounds like a great plan, having both a bat house and a bee hive! Wonderful. Bee keeping sounds difficult, but if I could ever get around to it I might just do it. Save the bees!

Mandy My arachnophobia is not so intense is yours, but I also cringe at the thought of therapy. Not ready for that immerision stuff. Have you ever considered exploring how you came be phobic? I blame TV. (no, really, Jumanji and James and the Giant Peach partially have something to do with it). This kind of understanding helps me cope, in such a way the phobia isn’t as so mysterious anymore.

Man we really hijacked this thread….darn spiders.

Kiwi it started out because my mom. My uncle had but a dead black widow in her bed when they were kids and when she freaked out he was like oh they die after the bite you. So she was always afraid of them which rubbed off on me. She’s gotten more immune to them and I’ve gotten more afraid of them when I started into my teenage years. Before I used be afraid but would kill it and be fine. Now if I can stay calm enough to kill it it’s a miracle. Speaking of I really need to get some hair spray. That’s my weapon of choice for them demons. Completely drench them until they curl up and die. It’s quite effective actually. The hairspray is sticky so once you start spraying it gets stuck and cant go running off in a corner. Not that I’ve been brave enough for that in a while, usually it’s my boyfriend I make do it now. Haha

Oh my!! Had no idea that my spider ordeal of this morning would stir so much emotion!!!!

I’m so sorry for those who are arachnophobic…I guess my disclaimer didn’t work…oops.

KS your comment was so hilarious, I now have a mental image of Strong and fearless Wife Warrior and scared little KS screaming like a little girl behind her. Thank you that was priceless!

Mandy That’s……..a really cruel prank. It’s gotten worse for me too. Occasionally, I vacuum the cellar spiders that reside in my bedroom. I’ve been seeing them all my life, so I’m very used to them unless they come too close (they keep their distance in the corners. Sometimes I’m merciful and leave them be, but if they persist living here once I vacuumed their webs away, bye bye…That’s as far as I get with dealing with spiders and I still feel bad >_<

Yeah, I guess we all felt like sharing. Solidarity.

Save the bees indeed! We depend on them for a lot of our food production

TheTeaFairy Sorry for taking over your note, haha. Your disclaimer did work, but I want to get over my fears, and words are much safer than pictures or the real thing. When I was looking up treatment options, they said that for patients whose fears are too strong, or are impossible to treat with immersion, that allowing themselves to think about the fear is the first step. So reading through is my way of treating it in a way.

Kiwi Yep, she was a little girl and he was a young boy so he thought it was funny, and she got a fear of spiders. My old house had them in the bathroom all the time, and if they were in there, so long as I wasnt showering when I saw it, it wasn’t so bad, because I knew I had my trusty weapons near by. Even when my phobia got worse, the safest place to experience one was the bathroom.

Then we moved to a new house in the middle of the woods, and with the sharp increase of the bigger ones, my phobia reached the crying uncontrollably level. Moving off to college was such a relief because I some how lucked out and didn’t see any for almost a year.

Then moving off campus and to a less pest controlled area, the sudden shock of spiders again shocked my system. So even when I see the littlest of spiders,and even when I tell myself its teeny tiny, it can’t hurt me, I’m being irrational, I still panic.

Middle of the woods….nope. Unless the house is well insulated. I take it when you move out you’ll be living in the suburbs or a city? I bet you had a lot daddy longs legs, which love the woods for some reason. I hate those too, even they aren’t spiders. Tiny spiders are fine for me (I actually think they’re kind of cute…), mostly because, I think, I have never seen anyone freak out about them, as opposed to the larger spiders. Anything bigger than nickel triggers me (unless it’s cellar spiders).

I don’t know if Florida woods are different but I actually haven’t seen a daddy long legs in years. I know that I wasn’t afraid of them before but idk if that’s changed. And middle of the woods might be a little of an overstatement. They’re “woods” within a town. ~5-6 minute drive down a dirt road, into woods. But still completely surrounded by trees. I’ve lived in Orlando the past 2 years though so yes city haha.
I don’t know what a cellar spider is and I feel like I don’t want to know haha. I used to be fine with wittle baby spiders before but I swear in the last 5 years or so it’s like my body disobeys me when 8 leggeds are around. I say calmly kill it and my body interprets it as curl up in a ball and cry. There must be some kind of miscommunication or something haha.

Hahaaha. I do the same thing with spiders. I catch them in a cup and slide some cardboard under them. Once I get outside though, I tilt the cup and run. I would like to think that the spider knew you were trying to help him outside and left on his own.

Lol, stacy let’s hope you’re right, but so far so good, it hasn’t visited my bed…yet!!

Happy to see I’M not the only one trying to save them…(I totally run also once I release them outside, haha!)

See, he did leave. The last spider I caught was a jumping spider. Super aggressive little guy. I ran so fast back inside and left the cup out until the morning.

soooo agree this tea is kind of heaven

We’re all cuddled up watching “A Wish for Wings That Work.” Tazo is not particularly amused with Bill the Cat.

I need to get that one watched as well. Rhinoceros!

She left me for an ALBATROSS!

Nothing is better at 5 AM than frangipane tarts.

And tea! Can’t forget the tea. :)

Oh man, a second steep at 6 minutes was amazing as well. I’m gonna try to nap now, then I’ll get up and drink another steep!

I never thought about weighing them. That is brilliant. I have quite a few where the leaves are just too big to fit in my measuring spoon.