Two Happy Teacups Kathy Heck / Roberta Adam Owners - The Talking Teacup, Ltd. Hello Spring – Welcome Summer With the arrival of spring, we celebrated our 6 month anniversary on May 1st.  It’s hard to believe we’ve been open 6 months already!   Each day brings us a new experience, a new friend and a new recipe for you to savor.  We hope that you have enjoyed our first six months as much as we have and we so look forward to many more months and years together. We welcome summer with the installation of central air conditioning, the opening of our outdoor dining area and the introduction of iced tea flights, which is a refreshing sampling of 4 different freshly brewed iced teas.   We’ve also added a variety of new teas to tantalize your taste buds and in the gift shoppe new items arrive daily.    As we welcome summer and the outside temperature rises, stop by The Talking Teacup for the best hot or iced tea brewing and a delicious breakfast or lunch.     Tea Talk A word about Tea Did you know that Chamomile tea could be used to make an inexpensive organic garden spray?    Chamomile tea used in a garden is an excellent preventative for damping-off and as a fungus fighter. It’s a good idea to use it on seed starting soil, seedlings or any humid planting area.   It also works great combating fungus on rose plants. To make: Pour 2 cups boiling water over 8 tea bags of chamomile tea. Add one teaspoon of baking soda.  Let steep until cool and strain into a spray bottle.  Spray to prevent damping off and anytime you see any fuzzy white growth on the soil or plants.  Chamomile garden tea will keep for about a week before going bad. This, as well as many additional tea related products, can be purchased at The Talking Teacup Gift Shoppe.       Mad Hatters Tea Day! Hats off to all of the fun loving participants at our Mad Hatters Tea Day on May 8th.    We had such a good time sporting our own special hats and seeing all those other fun, fancy and fantastic hats.   Almost every type of hat could be seen perched on a proud pretty head; from the all-American baseball cap to the formal theater hat complete with feather and veil, the variety was simply stunning and ladies…we looked fabulous J All participants entered into a free drawing to win a hat box filled with assorted teas, accessories and note cards.  Our lucky, hat happy winner is: Anita King Please check our Calendar of Special Events for other upcoming fun filled events!     "Flower"        I see in you the things I need;                  We started out with just a seed.      I feel with you the things we share;                  We planted it with hope and care.      I hear from you the things I must;                  We nourished it with love and trust.        I took our plant and let it die,      because we no longer could try,      to keep our lovely plant in bloom,      and so no flowers fill my room.        But now the thing I need to know,      is if a plant again will grow,      in soil that has long been dead,      or have we killed our flower bead?                                                       Eric Heck         Chamomile Moments Stories to warm the heart Losing Your Marbles   The older I get, the more I appreciate time.  A few weeks ago, sitting at the kitchen table with a steaming cup of tea in one hand and the morning paper in the other I tuned the radio into one of those morning call in shows.   An older gentleman was speaking.  He was telling the caller something about "a thousand marbles."  I was intrigued so I paused to listen. “Well caller, it sure sounds like you're busy with your job.  I'm sure they pay you well but it's a shame you have to be away from your family so much.  It’s too bad you missed your daughter's dance recital.” He continued, "Let me tell you something caller, something that has helped me keep a good perspective on my own priorities." And that's when he began to explain his theory of a "thousand marbles." "You see, I sat down one day and did a little math. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years. Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900, which is the number of weeks that the average person has in their entire lifetime. "Now, stick with me caller, I'm getting to the important part. It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail," he went on, "and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred weeks.  I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand weeks left to enjoy. "So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside of a large, clear plastic jar right in my living room.  Every week since then I’ve taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focus more on the really important things in life. There is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight." "Now let me tell you one last thing before I let you go. This morning, I took the very last marble out of my container.  I figure that if I make it until next week then I have been given a little extra time and who couldn’t use a little more time, a few more marbles, a few more memories.   Caller, it’s now your time, those are your marbles, what are you going to do with them?”   The airwaves went silent, I tilted my head towards the radio and looking at its dial I just had to smile.  That morning, I had planned to wash the windows and then I was going to do the dishes, maybe clean the clothes.   Instead, I bounced upstairs and woke up my husband with a kiss. "C'mon honey, I'm taking you to breakfast." "What brought this on or have you lost your marbles, I’m trying to sleep here?" he asked with a smile. "Oh, nothing special, it's just been a long time since we spent a special morning together.   Hey, while we’re out do you mind if we stop at a toy store? I need to buy some marbles...."   Talking Teacups   If you've joined us for Tea and had occasion to sit within our lovely enclosed porch, or perhaps peaked out one of the side windows in the main dining room, you may have noticed the old “Pennsylvania Blue” fieldstone patio right outside.   Perhaps you wondered if we were planning on offering outside dinning someday.   Well, wonder no more, because we’re happy to announce the opening of our: Garden Tea Service  Privately shaded, under the canopy of a majestic 200-year-old English walnut tree, and surrounded by nicely trimmed 15-foot hedges, our Garden Tea offers a special secret place to enjoy the outdoors while savoring a delicious breakfast or lunch and a wonderful pot of tea.   Or, for a cooling change of pace, sample a refreshing flight of our fresh brewed iced teas.  There is a natural affinity of tea and the garden.   Chinese legend says that the very first tea was brewed outdoors by the Emperor Shen Nung when leaves from a tea bush, Camellia Sinensis, fell into some water he was boiling while on a trip around his kingdom.  This must have been a lovely place, a garden spot for sure, if tea plants surrounded him.   To honor that legend we’ve included in our Tea Garden’s landscape two beautiful tea bushes.  While Camellia Sinensis, is marginally hardy in our area, we’re hoping they’ll do just fine in our little garden spot.   Tea and gardens also have a historical connection with The Talking Teacup.   You see, the original part of our Farm House was built in 1761 which just so happens to be the same time that tea gardens, as they were called, historically came into being.   Tea Gardens arose as a result of women’s demand for change in the mid 1700’s.  During that time coffee houses were all the rage, combining business and gossip with the pleasure of drinking coffee and tea.  Although women enjoyed tea at home, they would not dare set foot in a coffee house as they were a noisy and bawdy mixture of business and decadence.   For women of the time, tea drinking was an occasion of great ceremony and the precious tealeaves were kept in a locked caddy.  Once or twice a week the lady of the house would unlock the caddy to serve tea as a family treat or to impress an important guest.  Some coffee houses, at that time, were selling the finest teas, however women who valued their reputations would have no desire to enter those places.   Ladies wanting to buy fine teas had to send a footman, or hired hand, inside to make the purchase.    Inevitably, those women demanded better service.   Coffee houses began to sell teas outside the confines of their rowdy walls.   This soon gave rise to serving tea outside the coffee house, oftentimes in the rear garden.  As social life in that century became more sophisticated, the coffee houses gave way to the tea garden as the new social meeting place.  So you see, while we harbor no illusions of grandeur about our little tea garden replacing Starbucks coffee houses, we do find it interesting that history is on our side!  Come; enjoy a little piece of history outdoors in our lovely little Tea Garden!