March 14
Growing and making ‘real’ tea!
I’ve been exploring ways to wean myself off tea-bags and my favourite herb tea has become a freshly-picked combination of lemon verbena, lemon grass, lemon balm and mint.
A few years ago I planted a few Camellia sinensis trees and, though it’s not the right time to try because there are very few young tips, tonight I made my first cup of ‘real’ dried tea with their leaves. It was so unbelievably delicious! Now that I’ve overcome my anxiety about not knowing what to do, I’m excited about experimenting to eventually make some traditional black tea as well …. who knows, I may even work out how to make Earl Grey!
Camellia sinensis have a pretty blossom which will open over the next few weeks. It’s after they flower that you prune and encourage the formation of lots of new young tips for tea making. I’d love to try making white tea with those.
The camellia makes a great evergreen hedge. It thrives in acid soil and shade – just perfect for the Mountains.
To make my tea tonight I harvested a few tips and the smallest leaves I could find, steamed them for one minute, then baked them at 120C for 20 minutes. So simple – can’t believe I’ve waited this long to try it.
There are so many differing instructions online for making White tea, Green tea, Oolong tea, and Black tea. It wasn’t until my leaves were in the oven that I read in one recipe that I should have ‘rolled’ them after steaming them. Can’t imagine it tasting better than it does, but I’ll try that next time.
I’m so happy with my cuppa tonight, AND the jar of tea I have for the coming week … and I’m also excited about all the experimenting yet to come!
How are other people contributing to A Year in a Day?
Libby reported that living part-time in a unit in Sydney is not the same as being on their property in the Mountains with veggies, chooks, bees etc-but … yesterday their action was to purchase a vege pod for their balcony so they could grow their everyday veg like lettuce, shallots, bokchoy, herbs etc!
It’s so inspiring to hear what other people are doing, and we’re gearing up to see if we can actually reach 365 actions in one day for World Health Day on Thursday 7 April. If you haven’t contributed an action yet, why not consider joining us for a WORLD FIRST on the 7th? Email planetaryhealth(at)bmcc.nsw.gov.au to let us know your action in advance.
Is it worth taking action?
Research by academics at Leeds University, engineering firm Arup and the C40 Cities climate group has identified that 73 per cent of all changes needed by 2030 to keep the world on course to meet the Paris agreement targets need to be made by governments and industry.
But private citizens have considerable influence over the remaining 27 per cent.
Join #AYearInADay Citizen Science Project to see if we can all inspire one another to do more to restore planetary health
We’d love you to collaborate with us and share any actions you take to restore planetary health in the comments below or on our social media. While we welcome you to share ANY ACTION you take to inspire others, we’ll be recording NEW or EXTRA actions that people take as part of our tally, because we’re trying to inspire one another to do more than we’re already doing. Feel free to copy some of the actions our participants have been sharing – the action only needs to be NEW for you. Let us know if other people are influenced by your posts, or ours, so that we can measure outcomes of this project. To leave a comment on this blog you’ll need to enter your name and email address.
Our first step is to record 365 new actions. Our second step will be to aim for 365 new actions in one single day. Imagine if we could do it every day of the year! You can subscribe to receive a daily action from us here
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