On Comparisons of Sandpiper Size and Tea Tasting: Lessons From Kaufman's Advanced Birding

My girlfriend Kelsey recently gave me a present, the newer edition of Kenn Kaufman's book "Advanced Birding". I'm finding this book has a lot of universal relevance to my life, including to the subject of tea tasting.

It's shorebird migration season, and the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge has been filling up with migrating shorebirds, including an abundance of Least sandpiper, Killdeer, and Lesser Yellowlegs, as well as smaller numbers of Semipalmated plover and a lone Pectoral sandpiper, which I have now seen twice. Identifying these birds is tough, and in many cases, size is an important clue.

One thing that Kaufman, widely respected as an expert birder, points out, is that without a size reference, it is impossible to accurately gauge size. Want an example? Look at this bird, which I photographed in the refuge recently:

How big is it? The photo alone gives no size reference. If I tell you that it is a Least sandpiper, and you know how big that is, then you have a reference. Let me give another example. How big is the same species, the least sandpiper (the smaller bird) in the following photo?

This photo was taken near Las Vegas, by Lip Kee Yap, and is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

The bigger bird on the left is a Killdeer, a bird, common across much of the US, which can be found both in open, grassy areas like lawns, gravelly areas like railroad beds, and on mudflats alongside sandpipers. Seeing the two birds side-by-side gives us a size reference.

Size is an important clue in bird identification, especially when comparing visually similar birds, like the greater and lesser yellowlegs, or pectoral sandpiper, which is visually similar to the least sandpipers pictured here. Just how similar, you ask? Look for yourself:

This photo is by Andreas Trepte, and is licensed under BY-SA 2.5.

Is this bird bigger than the first bird? Yes, it is significantly bigger, and if you saw them side-by-side, you'd be able to see this very clearly. But looking at one bird alone, with no familiar objects for comparison, the size is impossible to see. And without a size reference, anyone other than an expert would have a tough time knowing that this is even a different species from the sandpiper in the first two photos. Both species have essentially the same plumage pattern, and both have yellow legs, and very similar bill shapes and sizes, and body shapes as well.

But check out these photos of a pectoral sandpiper alongside a Killdeer, or two pectoral sandpipers near a least sandpiper, and you'll see that it's hard to confuse these two species of sandpiper when you see them with a clear size reference, such as side-by-side, or near another species of familiar size. The pectoral sandpiper is much larger!

Back to tea:

I've lost count of the number of times I've described a tea as being "more bitter than" or "sweeter than" another tea, or having more of this aroma or that aroma, when I was only tasting one tea, and comparing it to memory. Do I really know this for sure? In a coarse sense, yes. I can probably tell that a stronger-than-average Irish Breakfast tea is more bitter and robust tasting than a lighter-than-average Darjeeling First Flush, just how, in the field and without a size reference, I can probably tell that a turkey is larger than a sparrow, even if I am only seeing one bird.

But for subtle differences in taste, I'm not sure we can know these things with much certainty, without actually tasting teas side-by-side. I wrote about some time ago, about how mood affects how we perceive taste. When comparing to memory, there is the possibility of remembering things in a skewed fashion. Our memory of an earlier tea when we try a new tea and make a mental comparison may be clouded by our expectations of how we think the new tea is going to taste, and tainted by how favorably we feel about the companies selling both the tea we are drinking and the tea we are comparing it to in our mind.

I'm not convinced I have the ability to be particularly accurate when it comes to these sorts of things.

What do you think?

How much do you think you can tell about how a tea you are drinking compares to a tea in your memory? Do you think the subtle tastes and aromas of tea is easier to compare without direct reference than the size of a lone sandpiper on a distant mudflat? Or do you think we can sometimes be a little over-confident with our comparisons of a tea we are drinking to another tea in our memory?

Elevation and Climate: Visiting Boreal Forest on a Mountain

One of the things that I have become fascinated in in recent years is weather and climate. This interest is evident in the level of detail about weather which the articles go into on RateTea's pages on the various tea-producing regions. One of the key factors in tea production, which is explained in more depth on the page about climate, geography, and tea production, is elevation. A quick summary of the influence of elevation on climate is that temperatures get colder and precipitation (rain and snow) gets greater as elevation increases. And, as hikers at very high elevations are aware of, the air gets noticeably thinner.

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit Massachussets, where I went to the top of Mount Greylock. Mount Greylock is quite remarkable from an ecological perspective. From a distance, it looks a lot like any of the other surrounding hills, but when you actually climb to the top, you will find an ecosystem quite remarkable for a point so far south:

Pictured above is a meadow on the edge of Boreal forest, or Taiga. Boreal forest is common in Canada, Alaska, and the extreme northernmost parts of the continental U.S. But Massachusetts is far enough south that only a small amount of this ecosystem exists, only at the top of this one mountain. Boreal forest reflects the adaptation of plants and animals to cold temperatures, long winters, and short summers. Some of these adaptations include:

• Trees have a conical shape. This helps to shunt off the heavy loads of snow falling in the winter, so that the trees do not lose limbs. Evergreen trees (like pine and cedar) growing in southerly climates tend to have a rounded shape, because there is little to no snow in the winter; round shapes capture more sunlight, but increase the risk of limbs breaking during a snowfall.
• Most plants are evergreen. This is because the temperatures are so cold that there is not enough time for the nutrients in the soil to break down and become available to plants; because nutrients are scarce, plants cannot afford to drop their leaves each year. Incidentally, the tea plant's evergreen status is also an adaptation to low nutrient levels, which is why it is able to survive on rocky outcroppings like those in the Wuyi mountains.
• Deciduous trees have light-colored bark. Think aspen and paper birch (white birch). The temperatures are so cold in winter, and the sun is at a low angle, so that if a deciduous tree (which drops its leaves in winter) were to have dark-colored bark, the sun shining on it horizontally would heat the bark so much that it would crack. This is the same phenomenon of thermal shock that I explained in my earlier post about why teaware can shatter when pouring boiling water in it. The light color of the bark reflects the sun and prevents the heating and cracking of the bark.

These ecosystems extend even farther south, at even higher elevations. For example, one can find a similar ecosystem in the mountains of New Mexico, although there, the ecosystem only shifts to boreal forest somewhere around 8,000 feet. Mount greylock, pictured above, is under 3,500 feet.

Birds galore:

As a birdwatcher, I was excited to explore this ecosystem to find birds that normally only winter or migrate through the areas where I live. It was July, a time when migration has stopped and usually only breeding resident songbirds are found. And I found quite a few birds that I normally only see during winter or migration, including white-throated sparrow, dark-eyed junco, purple finch, winter wren, Blackpoll warbler, yellow-rumped warbler, Blackburnian warbler, black-throated blue warbler, and black-throated green warbler, among others. The Blackpoll warbler in particular is a species that breeds only in boreal forests.

Above is a photo I took of a singing white-throated sparrow, near the summit of Mount Greylock. In Southeastern Pennsylvania and Delaware, these birds are normally only winter residents.

Try looking for the changes in ecosystem with elevation:

If you have the opportunity to hike or drive to the top of a tall mountain in any region of the world, I would recommend doing so. It will not only help you to learn more about ecology, but it will also help you to see firsthand some of the aspects of how geography influences climate which are most important in the production of tea. If you live in an arid climate, such as the southwestern U.S., you will be even more able to see the phenomenon of how precipitation increases with altitude.

These same factors control where the tea plant is able to be grown. In drier countries like Kenya, tea is only able to be grown at higher elevations, where rainfall is higher. But as the elevation becomes too high, temperatures eventually become too cold. In humid climates, tea can be grown the whole way to sea level, and in colder regions, it can only be grown at low elevations.

What do you think?

Do you think much about elevation, and its influence on climate and ecosystems? Have you ever noticed these sorts of changes, when driving or hiking? Do you live in an area with easy access to mountains or changes in elevation? Do you live in or have you ever visited an area that is dry or cold enough that you can see major changes in an ecosystem as elevation changes?

First Impressions Can Be Wrong: a Juvenile Yellow-crowned Night-heron

This post starts out talking about a bird, but if you are patient, it does relate to tea. Recently, this Friday, June 29th, to be specific, I was in Cobbs Creek Park, on the western border of the city of Philadelphia, near the Environmental Education Center at the end of Catharine street, and I spotted this bird:

People with only minimal knowledge of birds might recognize that it is a type of heron. The cryptic plumage is a clue that this is a juvenile bird; juveniles begin with camouflaged plumage, because birds tend to be most vulnerable to being eaten by predators during the first year(s) of their life. As the birds age, they become more experienced and better able to stay safe, and they take on their brightly-colored plumage that helps them to defend a territory and attract a mate.

First impressions can be wrong:

When I first caught a glimpse of this bird, my first impression was that it was probably a juvenile green heron, because, of the birds that look vaguely similar, that bird would be most common and likely to occur in this habitat. But then I realized that it was a night-heron, a primarily nocturnal species of heron. A tip-off is the bright red eye, adapted to seeing at night. Then I thought, oh, wow, it is probably a black-crowned night heron, something I would be excited to see in this city park, but would not think entirely out of the ordinary. But upon examining it in detail, I found that it was actually a yellow-crowned night-heron, quite an unusual find anywhere in Philadelphia, but especially in a city park like this, and, on eBird, never recorded in June. Click the photo to find a page where I explain how to tell apart the juveniles of these two bird species; the easiest clues are the long neck and legs.

I find that the process with which I progressed through different (false) impressions of this bird parallels the process with which I experience many things in life. Sometimes first impressions are spot-on, but in other cases, especially with things that I do not experience often, they can be way off. I've only seen a handful of yellow-crowned night herons in my life, and they have usually been adults in very bold, distinctive plumage.

What makes an expert?

Recently I spoke with an experienced birder who had once had the opportunity to bird with Kenn Kaufman, a famous naturalist and author of several well-respected field guides to birds. The birder I spoke with was struck by how Kaufman would look at very common birds extensively, often examining them for a considerable length of time before calling out what they were. Most birders (including, often, myself) will quickly call out: "Oh look, it's a such-and-such." whereas Kaufman was examining the bird in detail, ruling out all the possibilities of rare, unusual, and unexpected species that it could possibly be. Maybe Kaufman is such an an expert on birding because he suspends judgement until he has enough evidence to form an accurate opinion.

On tea:

Often, when I sample a new tea, I have a bunch of impressions about it. I see how the dry leaf looks, I see how it smells. If it is a tea that I'm familiar with, my impression of what it will actually taste like when brewed is often quite accurate. But, especially if it is a type of tea I am less familiar with, my impression can be way off.

The same is true of tea companies. Recently I wrote about grasping the aesthetic of a tea company, a process which can take considerable time. There are many stages of first impressions in this process, including looking at their website, reading or hearing about others' opinions of their teas, and tasting the first tea, and then later ones. But I find that it often takes extended sampling to really form an informed opinion. I can form an impression very quickly, but, like with the case of the heron pictured above, it might be wrong.

I don't particularly have a life goal of becoming an expert on tea (or birds), but I do feel inspired by this occurrence to suspend judgement and pay more attention, both to tea and birds.

How about you?

What are some times in your life, both pertaining to tea, and other matters, in which your first impressions have been way off?

Systems Thinking and the Benefits of Thinking Holistically About Tea and Everything

This post is about systems thinking, which is related to thinking holistically. Wikipedia has an extensive article about systems thinking; it's a useful article, but is a bit rough around the edges. Here I want to explain, in the context of the world of tea, what systems thinking is, and how it can benefit you.

An illustration of systems:

A system, generally defined, is a combination of interacting components which form a cohesive whole with interesting properties of its own.



Pictured here are four systems: M51: Cosmic Whirlpool, two colliding galaxies, some tea gardens in Ooty, Tamil Nadu, India, a tea shop in Kunming, Yunnan, China, and a diagram of a typical plant cell (which could easily be the cell of a tea plant). These pictures illustrate that systems can exist at vastly different spatial scales, from the cosmic to the microscopic, and that they can be natural or can involve human civilization.

Systems are complex, and often exhibit bizarre, interesting, and beautiful phenomena, which is what leads people to describe them at times as complex systems.

What exactly is a system?

A system is more than just a collection of things. If you collect a bunch of loose teas and throw them in your cupboard, you have a tea collection, not a system. A system is something where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You might have a system of organizing your tea, but in this case, the system lies in your thoughts and practices, not the teas themselves.



This picture, titled "Tea in the Garden" by Albert Chevallier Tayler, shows a group of people gathered for tea. Groups of people are examples of systems.

Have you ever noticed that when a group of people gets together, the group takes on characteristics that the individuals in the group do not have alone? In some cases, a group might be much more effective at solving problems or getting work done than the individuals alone, or perhaps a quirky and fun sort of humor comes out, but in other cases, conflicts arise that did not exist when people were just operating as individuals. These new properties of the group are one of the key features of complex systems. Any group of interacting people forms a system: families, communities, classes in school, businesses and organization, casual social circles, political groups.

Systems are ubiquitous in biology and ecology. Individual biological cells are systems, as they have many individual parts that work together in complex ways. Within the human body, there are many systems: the circulatory system, the digestive system, the brain and nervous system. A person, or any life form, is also a system.



Cities, like one of my favorite cities pictured here, are systems.

Systems also abound in business: each individual business is a system, and the economy of a town, city, or region is itself a system. Furthermore, businesses operate within and are constrained by systems, including the economic system of society as a whole, as well as local and national political systems, and the system of culture in society, as well as local and regional subcultures.

Systems thinking vs. mechanical or linear thinking:

I find that systems thinking is best described by contrasting it with other types of thinking, which I like to call mechanical thinking or linear thinking. Mechanical thinking treats things as machines, and tends to use reductionist reasoning (understanding something by taking it apart or looking at the pieces). This type of thinking is highly logical, and is often very good at solving problems that are clearly stated.

Mechanical thinking has its place; without engineering, which is a discipline founded mostly on linear thinking, we would not have the complex buildings or technology that many of us take for granted in our modern world. And straightforward, linear thinking is also necessary in many aspects of life, and business. But this way of thinking can be severely limiting when dealing with systems when we rely on it exclusively.

Examples demonstrating the misapplication of mechanical thinking:

• This tea, which tasted great yesterday, tastes bad today. I must have steeped it too long, or used water which was too hot.


• I want to make more money through my tea website. I need to get more visitors to my site, to increase the conversion rate (rate of making a sale) for visitors, or to increase the amount of tea purchased per sale.


• My tea growing operation (or anything-growing operation) is struggling to make ends meet. I need to find some way to cut my costs, or increase the yield per acre.

These misuses of mechanical thinking can lead from relatively unimportant consequences, like a person puzzling for no good reason at why they can't brew their tea properly, to more serious ones, like an online tea company owner making some bad business decisions, to catastrophic ones, such as agribusiness engaging in farming practices that lay off workers and destroy the environment.

One particularly straightforward example of the failure of linear thinking, in engineering, is explained in an article I wrote about flood prevention. An individual property owner can protect themselves from some short-term flooding damage by making changes to their property to run water off their property as quickly as possible. But, collectively, if everyone in a region follows these practices, catastrophic flooding will become a much bigger problem. The optimal solution for a region as a whole is for each property owner to minimize the runoff from their property.



Much of the flooding that happens in the U.S. is preventable, as it is caused by land-use practices that speed the runoff of water.

There are numerous similar issues in tea production, and in agriculture in general. I don't have any experience with tea cultivation, but I have a lot of experience with small-scale gardening, and I have researched the agricultural system in the U.S. a lot. Here in the U.S., mechanistic thinking has resulted in a move towards monoculture crops, cultivated by chemically-intensive farming methods...fewer people are involved in farming, the farming happens in ways that are damaging to the environment, and the produced food is of much lower quality.

Systems thinking, or holistic thinking, can lead us out of these sorts of binds. Thinking holistically is an essential part of sustainability. Systems thinking does not replace or contradict linear thinking, it just steps back and looks at the big picture in addition to the details. Often, whereas linear thinking is good at answering questions that are correctly posed, systems thinking is good at evaluating whether we are asking the right question, or coming up with creative solutions.

Examples of systems thinking in these same cases:

• This tea, which tasted great yesterday, tastes bad today. Maybe I steeped it too long or used water which was too hot, or maybe I'm perceiving it differently because I'm in a bad mood today, or because I ate different food before drinking it.


• I want to make more money through my tea website. I could try reaching a new audience, try improving the experience people have on the site, or try carrying unique offerings which will make my company stand out.


• My tea growing operation is struggling to make ends meet. Maybe by developing new cultivars, pioneering new ecologically-friendly farming methods, I can attract attention and sell the teas for a higher price. Maybe by banding together with other tea producers, we can solve problems that we cannot overcome on our own. Maybe we can find ways to eliminate middlemen and more directly access the higher profit-margins historically available in Western markets. Maybe we can influence local or national government policies and regulations in ways that reshape the business environment in ways that are better both for me and for my community.

The latter approach is highlighted in the approach Kenya has been taking to tea cultivation. RateTea's page on Kenya explains this in more depth. The approach being taken in Kenya does focus on bottom-line factors like cost and yield-per-acre, but it also seeks, unlike agriculture policies in the U.S., to reduce costs through reducing energy and chemical inputs, and to create cultivars with a broad range of adaptability in the face of global climate change, which poses a particular risk to farming in Kenya, where much of the country is too arid for normal western-style agriculture. Another example, which I discovered through a post by Jackie on the Tea Trade forums, from a different part of the world, is happening in India, where small tea growers are creating their own brand of tea, an idea that came up in self-help groups of small tea growers and tea factories. The people involved in this movement have also worked to encourage the Tea Board of India to get on board with some of these initiatives, and they seem to be having some success.

What do you think?

Do you think about systems and systems thinking? Do you find systems thinking helpful in your life and/or in your business?

Tea On A Very Cold Day

Last night and this morning it was very cold where I live. I don't know the exact low but it was forecasted to be around 17 degrees F, and it felt like it. Not only was it the coldest night of the year so far, but it well over 10 degrees (F) colder than the coldest night we have had up until this point, making it feel like a bit of a shock. Living in the city now, there are fewer natural things that I was able to photograph to capture the cold; without any visible ice or frost, this is the best I could come up with:



Bare branches against a blue sky often evoke the association of cold for me, as the coldest days in winter tend to be the clear ones.

I sometimes check the weather in different parts of the country, to get a sense of perspective. I was surprised that it was significantly warmer this morning in Minneapolis, which tends to average about 15-20 degrees colder than Philly in the month of January.

Tea when it is cold:

When it is very cold, I tend to want to drink a greater volume of hot liquids just to stay warm. This includes tea. However, because I don't like consuming additional caffeine, I tend to brew the tea more weakly. Often I achieve this by using a larger brewing vessel. Usually, my default mugs to make tea in hold about 12 ounces of water. On cold mornings, such as this one, I often prefer a larger mug...in this case, one that holds about 16 ounces, or two cups. I have one mug that I bought recently that I drank from today:



This mug was produced by a local potter who sells his pottery at the Clark Park Farmer's Market in West Philadelphia, every saturday. I really like his work, and it is very reasonably priced. His work is very clean and neat looking, yet simultaneously earthy and organic. Much of his work has a pattern of overlapping colors, blending to produce even more colors, produced by dipping the work in glazes covering part of it, and then repeating at a different angle. I hope to return to highlight more of his work because I think he has some genuine artistic flair; this simple photo doesn't really do justice to his creations.

Another thing I do on cold days:

Another thing I do when it's very cold is to stretch tea one infusion beyond when I would normally steep it. For example, if I would normally steep an oolong (western-style brewing) twice, before discarding the leaves, I steep it a third time, and enjoy the last infusion for its warmth, even if it is somewhat bland.

Do you drink more tea when it is very cold?

Do you drink more tea when it is very cold? Do you just deal with the additional caffeine, or do you brew the tea more weakly like I do? Or do you drink other hot liquids like hot fruit juice or herbal teas?

On Haiku, and Haiku on The Half Dipper, and on Appreciating Art

This post is about a tea blog called The Half-Dipper. If you do not know of this blog, I would recommend checking it out. It is a great blog to read for tea lovers, especially die-hard sheng Pu-erh enthusiasts, but in this post I want to highlight another aspect of this blog, its haiku. As of writing this post, Hobbes, the author of this blog, has shared well over a hundred haiku.



On haiku:

Most people are familiar with haiku, a Japanese form of poetry. You can read a bit about this form on Wikipedia's page on Haiku. Haiku, like most poetry in languages other than English, is a form that cannot be easily translated or truly appreciated in English in the same way. Rather than arguing about authenticity of haiku in different languages, I just want to remark that the form and structure of the poetry becomes different in a different language. It becomes a different art form, a new form which, in my opinion, is valid in and of itself.

When English speakers learn about haiku, they often learn about the syllabic structure, traditionally, 17 syllables divided into lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables. However, there is a lot more to haiku than this structure alone (and some modern haiku deviates from this structure). Haiku historically focused on nature as a subject (or a whole paradigm) for poetry, and this aspect can be just as important as the syllables. Even modern haiku that features urban or more modern subjects often reflects this sort of natural approach, with the poem saying something about the natural or organic nature of life, or drawing contrast by emphasizing something unnatural. Another aspect of haiku which is extremely difficult to translate or even approximate in English is the Kireji, a cutting word, which is used to divide two thoughts or ideas, the comparison or juxtaposition of which is central to the poem. Some of my favorite Japanese haiku (alas the author's name eludes me now) uses this juxtaposition to engage in a sort of self-deprecating humor related to Buddhism, the relationship of humans to nature, and the limitations of being human.

What I like about Hobbes' approach to haiku:

Hobbes typically includes a photograph with each haiku, which I often find enhances my ability to experience or appreciate the poem. I also find that many of the poems have a clearly evident juxtaposition of two contrasting ideas, in the spirit of the Japanese form, like I discussed above.

But what I like most about Hobbes' approach to haiku is that he often explains the meaning of the poem in a comment. If you visit his blog and read a haiku, I recommend always clicking to expand / read the comments, because he often posts his own comment after each poem, giving his interpretation or further explanation of what his intentions were with the poem.

I absolutely love this, I love when any artists or writers do this. I think there's something really wonderful and beautiful about explaining why one created a work of art or poem, what it means, and what its intention is. I also like the way in which this commentary is presented, nestled away in a hidden comment. This allows readers to read and experience the poem free of preconceptions, coming to their own interpretations, and then read the author's interpretation or ideas after the fact. I think this is just a wonderful paradigm in which to experience and appreciate art, one that is flexible and free, but also helps people to become more connected to the artist and aware of the artist's original intentions.

Read some:

If you want to check out some of these poems, travel over to the Haiku section of the Half-Dipper. And next time you create a work of art, whether it be a poem or anything, try this approach of attaching a little brief commentary or explanation of your intentions after the fact, hidden away somewhere that allows people to experience the art first, and then read your interpretation later. You may find that you really like the results this approach produces.

Being Evergreen: What Does it Mean that the Tea Plant is Evergreen?

As the Christmas season approaches here in the U.S., evergreen plants like spruce (for Christmas trees) and holly become culturally important. What does it mean to be evergreen?

The tea plant is an evergreen plant, meaning that it is green year-round. However, the term "evergreen" usually carries some additional meaning or connotation: the term "evergreen" is typically used to refer to plants that are green year-round in areas where a number of the other plants are deciduous (losing their leaves). The following photo shows an example familiar to people living in wet temperate climates like the eastern U.S., an evergreen pine tree in the midst of a bunch of deciduous trees in winter:



Evergreen plants are not the same as plants with needles (coniferous plants). There are broadleaf evergreens, like the tea plant, as well as deciduous needle plants, such as cypress, larch, and dawn redwood trees.

The fact that the tea plant is evergreen tells us several things about the nature of this plant, and in this post, I will explain a few things about what being evergreen means for a plant, from an ecological perspective.

Why are plants deciduous?

The short answer for why some plants lose their leaves and then later regrow them, rather than keeping them year-round, is that in certain climates, the environment or conditions are not beneficial for keeping the leaves year round. These unfavorable conditions usually take the form of certain periods of time that are either too cold or too dry. In the eastern U.S., the main seasonal stressor on plants is the cold winter. In other regions, such as parts of Sri Lanka or Africa, or even parts of the southwestern U.S., the main seasonal stressor is drought. Asia, including China, India, and southeast Asia, critical areas in tea production, are interesting in that they have both cold and dry conditions occurring together: this whole region has a strongly seasonal precipitation pattern, with dry winters.

When it is cold or dry, plants risk being damaged by the cold or drought. Plants can maintain their leaves under these conditions, but it takes resources, such as reserves of water, or expenditure of energy. Plants, like businesses, are faced with a cost and a benefit to keeping their leaves. Since plants produce energy from sunlight, and light levels are lower in the winter, the benefit of keeping leaves in the cold season is lower. The same is true of dry periods; most plants will not benefit much from keeping their leaves through dry periods -- even though there is ample sunlight, the plants usually just go dormant because they do not have enough water to continually photosynthesize.



The leaves of deciduous plants, like those of this pawpaw (Asimina triloba), tend to have relatively delicate or thin leaves that are light green in color, contrasting with the tougher and darker green leaves of evergreen plants. Why?

Think of a person trying to keep their home warm. People can choose to keep their home warm by burning more fuel, or they can invest more energy into insulating their home, allowing them to maintain the same amount of warmth while burning less fuel. Investing in insulating one's home is costly up-front, but pays off in the long-run. For this reason, homeowners and property owners are likely to invest in insulation, but short-term renters are unlikely to make similar investments.

Similarly, plants can keep their leaves safe through cold or dry periods by expending energy or water (a short-term expenditure), or by investing in a more robust leaf structure. The more robust leaf structure may include waxy coatings that help hold water in the leaf, conserving water during dry periods, and it may include resins and other chemicals that allow the leaf to operate at lower temperatures without expending energy. Evergreen plants tend to have tough leaves: they tend to be thick, leathery or waxy in texture, and tend to be very dark green in color.

The following leaves from Camellia sasanqua, a close relative of the tea plant, are a typical example. This plant, like all Camellias, has leaves adapted to both cold and dry conditions in winter:



Building a more robust leaf is costly to plants: firm structures and waxy coatings in particular are very energy-intensive to manufacture. If a plant is to get a good return-on-investment on a robust leaf structure, it needs to keep the leaf for a longer period of time, typically 2 or more years, so that it can gain back enough energy from photosynthesis to make the investment worthwhile. Like a business that needs to earn revenue to survive, a plant will die if it does not earn back its investment of energy through photosynthesis.

Why are some plants evergreen?

The explanation above establishes that plants are deciduous in climates with cold or dry seasons because the plants are not able to gain more than they expend by keeping their leaves year-round. If this is true, then why does one encounter some evergreen plants even in climates with periodic cold or dry seasons? And why do the coldest climates, such as the Boreal forests of northern Canada and high altitudes in warmer climates consist mostly of evergreen needle trees like spruce and fir?

The main factor is actually availability of nutrients, such as nitrogen. Deciduous trees drop their entire set of leaves every year, and need to resprout them. Building leaves not only takes energy, but also takes nutrients. Although the energy balance is in their favor, the balance of nutrients may not be. If the plants are growing in a nutrient rich environment, such as most of the forests of the Eastern or Midwestern U.S., the loss of nutrients is not much of an issue: the plant can just pick up new nutrients through its roots. But in areas with fewer nutrients in the soil, the yearly loss of nutrients is too crippling to the plant.

This phenomenon explains the dominance of evergreens in rocky outcroppings with poor soil, and on coastal areas and in pine barrens with sandy soil. It also explains the dominance of evergreens in cold climates, because as the climate gets colder, leaf litter breaks down more slowly, and eventually a point is reached at which few of the nutrients in the leaf litter are actually available to the plants growing in the soil.

Back to the tea plant:

The tea plant is evergreen, and it is a broad-leaf evergreen which grows tough, waxy leaves, quite unlike the tender, newly-sprouted leaves used to produce most of the tea we drink. Its leaves are adapted to get through both cold and dry winters characteristic of the Asian climates where it is native, and, in a broader sense, its evergreen nature is an adaptation to growing in nutrient-poor conditions, such as the rocky outcroppings of the Wuyi mountains.

What do you think?

Do you find the topic or phenomenon of plants being evergreen as interesting as I do? Do you have any thoughts to add?

Lego Bricks: Components, Quantization, and the Discrete, and Tea

When I was a child, I used to play a lot with Lego bricks. I love Legos; I think in many respects they are an ideal toy. Besides being really fun, I think they also encourage creativity and help develop spatial reasoning skills and manual dexterity. Pictured here is a box of Lego bricks:



One thing that is interesting about Legos is that they are inherently finite and limited, unlike other creative media, such as drawing or painting, or even playing with a musical instrument. When drawing, an artist can choose to draw anywhere on the paper, and a musician can choose exactly when to play each note, how loud to play it, and what tone or timbre to play with, whereas with Legos, the bricks can only connect in a predetermined number of ways.

But as anyone experienced with playing with Legos knows, the amount of possible combinations of even a modest number of lego bricks is so great that it is essentially endless for our limited human comprehension.

Components, The Discrete, and Quantization:

In the language of mathematics, Legos are discrete, whereas many other forms of art are continuous. This distinction parallels the distinction between calculus, which studies continuous changes, and discrete mathematics, which studies things broken into individual units. In the language of physics and quantum mechanics, Legos are quantized. Both of these mean that legos can be broken into smallest units or components, which can be placed or combined only in certain pre-determined configurations.

The Nature of the Universe:

When we look at the world around us, we see a world that looks for all practical purposes continuous. For example, we can raise our arm and move our arm or hand through various motions of distance or angle. We can cut a slice of cake, or a cucumber, exactly where we want to, rather than being constrained by only being able to divide it into a certain number of pieces.



But people who have studied science in more depth will know that the continuous nature of the world around us is actually an illusion. What looks like the unbroken surface of our skin, or the surface of the cucumber pictured above, is actually made of cells, and what looks like a smooth piece of metal is actually an array of individual atoms held together by electromagnetic forces. Furthermore, more modern advances in quantum physics have given us both theoretical grounds and empirical data to suggest that distance and time itself are quantized--that is, that there is a "smallest unit" of distance and smallest unit of time, and that particles cannot exist just anywhere in space and time. Like lego bricks, they can only be placed on the allowed grid.

Components, Quantization, and The Discrete, and Tea:

These concepts may seem very far removed from tea, but they are actually much more directly related than you might think. There are many macroscopic elements of our world that are broken into indivisible, discrete components. On a very basic level, we see these in terms of the individual leaves of a tea plant, which are well-defined units that we can see after brewing whole-leaf tea. But the same is actually true of more deeper things, things that are actually relevant to the important questions of how we experience tea. One particularly poignant example of something that is broken into a finite number of components is the olfactory receptors which we use to perceive aroma. The quantization or finite nature of the olfactory receptors is of paramount importance to how we experience tea because aroma is arguably one of the most important aspects of tea.

Humans, like any animals, have a finite number of receptors for aroma. These receptors are very numerous and very diverse, and they vary greatly from one individual to another. But for each person, the same basic fact or constraint is true: each chemical activates some finite number of receptors, in some combination, which are then processed by our brain. And the number of chemicals out there in the universe, even in our daily environment, far exceeds the number of aroma receptors we have. Our perception of smell is limited. This is why there are a variety of different chemical compounds which smell similar to us. When two teas seem to share the same aroma, it can sometimes mean that they share individual chemical components, but it can also mean that they have chemical components that are similar enough that they activate some of the same receptors.

When we try to communicate our experience of aroma to others, we run into another form of quantization: language. There are only a finite number of words with which we can describe aromas, and there are far fewer words available than there are possible combinations of olfactory receptors that can be activated by the chemical compounds in a cup of tea.

The Limitations of Being Human, and Being At Home in the Universe:

Smell, however limited it is, is still extremely complex, even when constrained by language. But I find it interesting to think about how, when it comes down to it, our experience of everything in life is finite, limited. It reminds me of our inherent limitations as human beings, but it also can make us feel more at home in the universe. Perhaps it is not so bad after all that we are finite human beings, as the very universe we live in seems to also be finite, discrete in some strange sense, like a set of lego bricks. But just like the lego bricks, it is so complex so as to effectively be boundless and infinite, offering far more depth and richness of experience than any one person could ever hope to experience in their lifetime.

More Thanksgivings For Tea

Last year, I published a post around Thanksgiving time, Thankful about Tea. I am still very thankful for the things mentioned in that post, and I would recommend reading it if you missed it. This post is in the same spirit. I am not just thankful for tea, but thankful for many things that have some connection to tea. I am thankful for:

• I'm thankful for Sylvia Odhner and her work that has helped RateTea look much nicer, as well as for her wonderful friendship that has helped me to grow in more ways than I can put into words.


• I'm thankful for the time I have in my life to slow down and enjoy a cup of tea multiple times throughout the day, and for the rest and mindfulness that these small breaks produce.


• I'm thankful for the earth's ecosystems that have given us tea, together with the myriad of different plants and animals we use for food, drink, and all sorts of other purposes.

If you eat turkey this thanksgiving, please remember where turkeys come from, and that they originated as wild creatures with great dignity. Look at the agility demonstrated by this wild turkey, which was perched high in a tree and flew across a large expanse of open water:



Happy thanksgiving!

A Walk in The Cemetery

I like the idea of moving away from writing specific reviews of tea, and finding other ways to capture the experience of tea. I am in Cafe Clave, and I just finished a cup of South Indian Select from Novus Tea. For me, tea is often a refreshing break. Another way I take a break is by walking in Woodlands cemetery. Here are three photos I took in this cemetery in October:



A red-tailed hawk carries a stick for its nest.



I frequently encounter Chinese characters when reading tea-related topics online. I rarely encounter them in this cemetery. This tombstone caught my eye and got me reflecting on the bonds that form between people across different cultures, which you can often see in the names and inscriptions in this and other cemeteries.



Institutional-looking high-rise dorms rise from behind the organic row of trees. The dorms belong to the University of Pennsylvania, a school which, at least to me, evokes connotations of order and control more strongly than a typical university. This is the view as I walk back towards the exit of the cemetery.

I find there is something inherently slow-paced and reflective about cemeteries. They are old, and provide markers of lives past. This particular cemetery has an organic nature to it, a wildness, that I like very much. As I leave it to get back to work, I reflect on these things.

The interplay between order and chaos, between control and freedom, is one of the topics that seems to come up again and again when I think of anything relating to food, drink, and ecology. I can taste it in my cup of tea just as I feel it when walking back into the city, from this cemetery.

Green Chaos: Randomness as a Source of Inspiration

I recently read a post on Tea Musings, titled Green Chaos, which references a term used by John Fowles in his essay The Tree. In case you don't read or know of this blog, it's a collection of original poetry and, as the name suggests, musings. The posts are brief, expressive, and I find often calming and nature-oriented. This blog offers an interesting contrast to the standard, cut-and-dry, "talk directly about tea" approach that many of us (including myself, usually) take to tea, and I find it very refreshing and inspirational.



The photo pictured here is from Rittenhouse Park in Newark, Delaware, a deceptively large forested park nestled in between suburban areas. This park and its forest are oven overshadowed by the two nearby parks, each of which has larger tracts of forest: White Clay Creek State Park and Iron Hill Park. But I find this park and its wild forests beautiful as well.

This is the sort of green chaos that I find inspirational: it is a forest where trees and other plants grow wild, and it shows an intricate and almost endless pattern of order emerging from chaos, flowing into more chaos, with yet more order emerging. This is the world in which we thrive, feel most alive, and realize our full potential, not the tightly controlled environments that we often create around us in the modern world.

Wild ecosystems as a source of inspiration:

Inspiration is very important to me. In my work, I create things...writing, poetry, sometimes images, websites, software, ideas, and systems. And as hobbies, I create music, and improvisatory dance (swing dancing and blues dancing). I also create food when I cook, and when I grow and dry herbs, and sometimes blend them, to make herbal teas or flavored teas, usually just to drink by myself. All of these activities require inspiration. Even things that are often viewed as mechanical or technical, such as programming, require great inspiration to me. When I'm inspired, I can finish a task in a tiny fraction of the time, and do a much better job of it, than when I'm trying to mechanically trudge through it. I also need to use inspiration to solve problems in my daily life, from complex problems involving human relationships, to practical ones like how to reattach the knob to my antique dresser that fell off because the bolt was stripped.

Inspiration is not a luxury, it's a necessity.

If you read this blog a lot, you'll know that I often like to cite my sources of inspiration. Often, I'm directly inspired by another person's blog post, or a conversation I read on an internet forum. But there are other, more indirect, and possibly more important sources of inspiration in my life.

Chaos as inspiration, randomness as a resource:

If you are skeptical that chaos can be a source of inspiration, I want to provide you compelling proof of this fact, from a realm that is about as highly ordered and as un-chaotic as one can get: the realm of computers.

One of the things that I've done over the course of my life is server administration. A server is a computer, usually housed in a data center, which is the physical location for websites and other web-based services. Servers are at the very core of the internet, but many of us are not aware of them or how they work. Administering a server is something that relatively few people are familiar with. Indeed, now I use a managed virtual hosting plan to host my websites, and I only do small tweaks to the administration, but for a while, I was doing everything myself.

One interesting thing about understanding the inner workings of a server is something called the entropy pool. Servers actually have a need for randomness--it sounds crazy, but randomness is actually a valued resource under certain conditions, such as the highly controlled conditions in a data center. One of them is in the generation of cryptographic keys. If you want to create an encryption scheme, you need to have random numbers. If the numbers are not truly random (i.e. if they are generated by a simple algorithm) they can be predicted, and thus, the encryption can be easily cracked. Even in the world of computers and technology, randomness, or chaos (which can be referred to as entropy) can be a valued resource.

Back to nature:

We cannot live without nature, and I think all of us would agree on that. We depend on the Earth's ecosystems for our clean air, water, and also for our food, other natural resources, and of course, our tea.

But in addition, we also depend on the randomness of nature for inspiration. Without the randomness, our lives would be sterile. We would not be able to create things, to solve problems, or to do anything that requires creativity.



The dry leaf of this pouchong / bao zhong tea shows a similar interplay between order and chaos of the forest above. Unlike computers, it exhibits an organic sort of structure, a lot like the structure of the forest above, or this blackbird flock below:



What are the sources of inspiration in your life? What are the sources of chaos and randomness that you find most inspirational?

Aesthetics: What Purposes Do They Serve?

This post is inspired by a discussion on the Tea Trade Forums about the new East India Company, in which we began talking about whether or not luxury and idealism are necessarily at odds with each other. The general sentiment seemed to be that, to a degree, they are. But this post is not directly about that...it's about aesthetics.

In the discussion, David Gall posted a comment about how he appreciates beautiful objects, whether it be handmade art or well-designed electronics (he gives Apple computer as an example). I certainly think that aesthetics and beauty have great value, both for me and in general.



Some things, like sunsets, seem to be nearly universally appreciated as beautiful. But aesthetic senses, the sense of what things are beautiful, also vary hugely from person to person and culture to culture. One thing I think about a lot is the degree to which our aesthetic sense is culturally constructed, and can be changed. I like to think critically about aesthetics, and ask the question:

What effect is our aesthetic sense having on our lives, on our society, and on our environment?

Aesthetics produce real-world results:

Aesthetics are by no means superficial...they impact nearly all choices we make in life, from which products we choose to buy, to which streets or roads we choose to drive or walk on, to where we choose to live, to which clothes we put on in the morning. And, although some of us may not fully admit it, they also impact which people we choose to associate with. Many of the ways in which aesthetics shape our lives are subconscious...we make decisions to choose one thing over another, and these are sometimes major choices that impact our lives and the lives of other people as well.

An example of aesthetics having ecological impact:

One of the aspects of modern society in which subjective and highly variable aesthetics can have far-reaching ecological impacts is that of the grassy lawn. Pictured here are two patches of grass or lawn in Bryn Athyn, PA. The first:



And the second:



I chose these two photos because they are about as directly contrasting as you can get, at least, in Bryn Athyn at this time of year. Which is more attractive to you? The top picture is more lush and vibrant; the bottom picture is more barren looking, but shows greater diversity, both of color (with the two different flowering plants), and biodiversity. If you know me at all, you'll know that I prefer the aesthetics of the second picture.

When choosing something like which tea to drink, our aesthetic sense is mainly a question of personal taste. But in the case of these two pictures of patches of grass, there are actual impacts of choosing one aesthetic over the other. The top picture depicts an unnatural lawn, heavily treated with chemicals to maintain both a lush green color and a monoculture of one plant (and you know how I feel about monocultures). The chemically-intensive maintenance of this lawn has negative consequences on the environment, and even on humans--that lawn is actually on the campus of Bryn Athyn College, in an area where people often walk barefoot, thus exposing themselves to whatever chemicals were sprayed on the grass.

The second picture of grass, an untreated area, has much greater biodiversity, not to mention that it is less resource-intensive to maintain. More biodiversity means greater ecological value, and most importantly, there are none of the negative impacts associated with using herbicides, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers. It looks a little bleak if you're used to the aesthetic in the first picture, but there's beauty hiding in the bleakness...the photo is taken during April, after all. If you are at all familiar with Pennsylvania's climate and ecology, you'll know that Pennsylvania does not naturally have lush, light-green colors year-round. April is a time in-between the browns and grays of winter, and the lush green foliage of spring...plants are beginning to bloom, but there's still a lot of brown and gray about. I personally find it beautiful.



This final photo shows a polluted stretch of the Delaware river, viewed from National Park, New Jersey, to remind us that, just as chemicals wash off and flow downstream, our actions flow into consequences. Fertilizers and chemicals used on lawns and in agriculture and industry kill wild animals, devastate ecosystems, contribute to cancer and other chronic diseases in humans, and destroy fishing industries downstream. This stretch of the Delaware river could be pristine; there could be abundant fish here, and it could be safe to eat these fish. In our current world, it is not.

Imagine what it could be like. And now:

You can choose your aesthetic sense:

You can choose which of the two pictures of grassy lawn to prefer. In this case, it's not a matter of personal taste. Choose the second one.

Perilla, or Shiso, in the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge

One of my favorite hobbies is birdwatching, and one of my favorite places for birdwatching in the Philadelphia area is the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum, a large tract of open water and wetlands, with some surrounding forest, located across I-95 from the Philadelphia Airport. Here is one of the smaller, more secluded necks of water in this refuge, to give you an idea of what sort of habitat can be found there:



While walking on the main loop in the refuge, which goes between two bodies of water, I discovered a patch of naturalized perilla, or shiso. Back in september, I wrote about Red Shiso, or Perilla, a plant I have found growing wild in many locations in Philadelphia. This population of perilla was of a green-colored variety, and the leaves were yellowing slightly as the plant had gone to seed and was preparing to die down for the fall:



I want to write more about this particular patch of perilla, but first, an aside about invasive plants.

Invasive Plants:

Humans, through trade and colonization, have brought numerous plants with them, mostly plants that we cultivate for food, but also weeds that hitched a ride with other cargo. These plants often escape cultivation and establish wild populations in the native ecosystems.

Non-native plants are aliens in the ecosystems which they colonize. In most cases, they are poorly adapted to these ecosystems, and they cannot establish stable populations, and die out. But in other cases, they have unique adaptations that allow them to thrive in a new environment, and the other members of the ecosystems they colonize are not adapted to their presence. In particular, plants like perilla, which produce complex combinations of aromatic chemicals, toxic to insects, are often not eaten by as many native insects. The native insects co-evolve with native plants, and are not adapted to eat these strange new plants. The plant thus gains a competitive advantage, as it has fewer natural herbivores. It then colonizes the ecosystem and grows disproportionately, shutting out other plants.

Note that the perilla leaves show no insect damage. Older leaves of plants usually show some sign of insect damage by fall...for an example, look at the black cherry leaves in my old post on tea monoculture and biodynamic agriculture. While this is good for the perilla, it's not necessarily good for the rest of the ecosystem. Fewer insects eating plants means fewer birds to eat the insects, and total biodiversity is decreased. As biodiversity is lost, the capacity for the ecosystem to adapt to changing conditions is diminished.

I'm picking on perilla unfairly here. Although I've seen it growing quite vigorously and establishing large populations, I haven't seen it establishing a monoculture and totally shutting out other plants, the way some invasive species do. Although perilla is considered to be an invasive species in some areas, it is nowhere near the most problematic one in this area, and in the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, it is relatively harmless compared to a number of other plant species. Some more problematic invasive species in this particular refuge are Phragmites, and some of the non-native honeysuckles.

Back to the perilla:

Out of curiosity, I gathered a small handful of leaves, enough for a single cup of herbal tea. The results of drying them can be seen here:




The Review:

I was steeping this tea as I was writing this post, and then I proceeded to drink a cup of it.

This perilla is noticeably different in aroma and flavor from the red-leafed variety. It has a much more minty aroma. The red variety had a strong licorice/anise quality; these qualities are still present, but weaker, and I would describe them as more fennel-like than anise-like. The flavor is much sweeter. There are still skunky and vegetal undertones that, in my opinion, characterize this herb. I also would say this batch was less basil-like, although still somewhat so. There is a very strong quality of fennel or anise that lingers on the tongue, more so than with the red variety. The lingering finish also suggests dried hay.

Really interesting! And different enough from the red-leafed variety that I can see growing both in my garden! Still, I would prefer to grow native herbs, especially given the considerations I talked about above.

Do you think about whether or not plants are native to your local ecosystems, when considering what to grow in your garden?

Seasonality of Tea and Nature

One of my favorite aspects of reading tea blogs, which is more evident in some blogs than others, is reading about nature. Among these blogs, one of my favorites is Tea for Today, where Marlena often adds detailed little notes about birds she observed, and often includes nature scenes. I also love Tea Musings, a blog with original poetry; many of these poems focus on aspects of nature and the changing seasons. I very highly recommend both of these blogs if you love nature as much as I do.

The way I view it, becoming interested in and knowledgeable about tea, beyond a certain level of introductory knowledge, requires becoming interested in nature. In this post I want to show how the seasonality in tea is part of a broader trend of patterns that exist in numerous other plants and animals. Here's a picture that, for me, captures this time of year, early fall:



This photo shows a black-and-white warbler in fall plumage. This is a first-year bird. The fall migration season of birds is characterized by an abundance of newly-raised first-year birds, travelling south for the winter. In the background are the yellowing leaves of a hackberry tree, partly bare already. Hackberry trees, of the Celtis genus, lose their leaves relatively early, but this year, many of these trees lost their leaves particularly early. In nature, there are fluctuations in the health and population of nearly all living things, including plants and animals. Just as the tea harvest is different each year, each tree species fares better some years than others, insect infestations wax and wane (attacking stressed trees more easily), and bird populations grow, shrink, and move in response to the abundance of food. These hackberry trees, partly defoliated and full of insects, and also full of ripe fruit, attracted huge mixed flocks of migratory warblers, who help to control the populations of these insects.

The changing of the seasons is evident in this bird; compare its appearance to a photo I took of the same species in spring, in the same area:



The background shows the intact, yellow-green leaves of spring, in this case, on a white oak. This bird has a black throat and cheek, signaling that it is a male. (I'm pretty sure the first bird is male too). You can click the photos to learn more about these birds.

One reason I wanted to share these birds is to make an analogy to the seasonality of tea. Both of these birds are clearly identifiable as black-and-white warblers. The differences between them are noticeable, especially after someone points them out, but they might not be immediately evident to an untrained eye. This difference is a lot like the difference between the different flushes or harvests of tea, for instance, Darjeeling black tea. A connoisseur would usually (not always) be able to easily distinguish first flush from, say, autumnal flush (which, by the way, is coming available right now). But inexperienced tea drinkers often (not always) would not. I think in this respect, seasonal distinctions in the different qualities of tea are a lot like the seasonal differences in bird plumage. There is a certain unity in how nature works and is organized.

Changing of the seasons:

The changing of seasons is a very fundamental aspect to human existence. Some areas, such as the eastern United States, where I am located, have four well-defined seasons, whereas other areas have fewer, more subtle, or different seasons. For example, San Diego has a cool, slightly rainy season in their "winter", a cloudy but generally rainless spell around May-June, and then a sunny late summer and early fall, sliding back into the cooler, slightly rainy winter. Only certain climates produce the familiar fall or autumn with changing tree colors and fallen leaves of diverse colors:



Many of the major tea-growing regions have very strong, well-defined seasons, but these seasons do not always correspond to what most Americans or Europeans know of as seasons. South and Southeast Asia has a strongly pronounced monsoon season, much more pronounced than any of the seasonal precipitation patterns in North America. Most of Asia has wet summers and dry winters. The dry winters produce a greater swing of temperatures during the winter than similar areas experience in North America...but Asia experiences fewer heavy snow events. Some tea-growing areas, including much of Sri Lanka, and parts of Africa, have a bimodal precipitation pattern, meaning that there are two distinct wet seasons and two distinct dry seasons in each year. In many tropical regions, the seasons are poorly defined at low altitudes, where it is warm year-round, but as altitude rises and it becomes both colder and rainier, the seasons become more pronounced. This effect is evident on the west-coast of the U.S., such as in how high altitudes in Southern California show a full four seasons like the east coast.

Unfortunately, our modern society has often disconnected us from the seasons. Carefully climate-controlled interiors of offices, homes, and cars make us comfortable, but disconnect us from the world outside. Year-round avaliability of normally seasonal foods like apples, oranges, or even lettuce, further disconnects us. We lose touch with nature. Is this what we really want? I don't want it at all, and as I've gotten older, I've realized that I'm willing to give up something (i.e. no apples in spring, no plums in winter) in order to be more in touch with what's really going on. I also have found that the food I eat tends to taste better, and also be more affordable, when I eat what's in season. Living this way is also more sustainable, as eating and using what is seasonally available requires fewer resources; it involves working with rather than working against nature.

The following photo of a red Bartlett pear and a Valencia orange looks natural, but is not: Bartlett pears are a fall crop of cold climates, and Valencia oranges, a late winter / early spring crop of milder climates. It's simply not possible that these were both produced locally--not even both on the east coast of the US. One of these was clearly shipped across the globe from a different climate:



The same things are true of tea, to a degree:

Single-harvest teas vs. blends:

Naturally, as the growing conditions of the tea plant change throughout the year, the character of the tea produced changes, sometimes radically. Large tea companies, including the brands of tea owned by Unilever, seeking a consistent product, often blend-out these differences, changing the proportion of teas used in their blends in order to retain a consistent flavor and character of their tea year-round and from one year to the next.

While I can understand the drive to consistency, I resist it. I want to taste that variability. And I want to stay true to production methods that work with nature, rather than working against it. Nature has variability. I want to taste that variability, and I certainly don't want to pay to blend it out.

How about you?

Downtime, Tea, Birding, and Warblers

The term downtime or down time has two uses. In computing and information technology, or when referring to any sort of technology or machines, downtime refers to the time on which a system or machine is down or out of operation. In human terms, however, downtime can refer to a period of rest or relaxation. I hesitate to use the term "non-productive" because I find rest to be of paramount importance in productivity. In fact, one of the things I most like about drinking tea is that the time to make and then drink tea provides a break. Even if you drink tea at a desk, while working on other things, the act of pausing to take a sip provides a microbreak; these tiny breaks can reduce the risk of work-related injury, as well as enhancing your concentration and focus.

Today, however, I took more than a microbreak. After starting work fairly early, the servers that RateTea and a number of other websites that I run are hosted on experienced some downtime. While this was slightly annoying, the problem was fixed relatively quickly. During this time, however, I was unable to do the work I wanted to do. Given that it is still during the peak warbler migration season, I headed outside to Woodlands Cemetery to do some birdwatching.



Unfortunately, I did not have my camera on me; the above pictures are all pictures I have taken, of warblers, at various times. Today I saw a black-throated blue warbler, pictured upper-right, and a northern parula, pictured lower-left, and a black-and-white warbler, pictured top left. The other bird pictured here, yellow-rumped warbler, I did not see today (they tend to arrive in large numbers in a few weeks), but I also saw a chestnut-sided warbler, pine warbler, bay-breasted warbler, magnolia warbler, and American redstart. All in all, I saw 8 species of warbler and 23 total species of birds. Given that this was just a casual walk around an urban cemetery, and not a planned trip where I tried to see as many birds as possible, I find this amount of biodiversity staggering.

When I returned, the servers were back up. This was down time for me, but I was still working in a sense. I systematically gathered data on what birds I saw, and entered the data into eBird, which is a joint effort of the Audubon Society and Cornell Lab of Ornithology. eBird solicits data from casual volunteers as well as scientists and people conducting systematic bird surveys, and collects it into one master database, a lot like I collect data on tea into the master database at RateTea. If you birdwatch, eBird is an invaluable resource, but even if you just find wild birds interesting and want to learn more about them, I would also recommend checking out this site.

Warblers, Other Birds and Tea?

What do warblers, or birds in general, have to do with tea? I've noticed that a number of tea bloggers write about birds from time to time, and I've noticed that people who are interested in wild birds tend to be more likely to be interested in tea, and vice versa. Why? Often, I find tea bloggers mention birds when they mention changes in seasons, as the changes in which birds are present and in the birds' songs and behavior marks the changing of seasons.

But I also find that birds and tea actually have some more things in common, possibly because they are both organic or natural, dealing with living organisms: they both have a similar type of diversity. And both birding and tea appreciation involve honing one's perception. With tea, it's mainly smell and taste, and with birds, it's sight and hearing, that one develops. When one starts drinking tea, it's pretty easy to see and taste the difference between black tea and green tea. When starting to watch birds, it is also pretty easy to tell a crow from a sparrow.

The warblers, on the other hand, are often among the most challenging birds to identify. Many of them only arrive during a brief 3-week window of migration, once in the spring, and again in the fall. A large number of warblers have different plumage in different seasons, and have different male and female plumage. Furthermore, they're tiny, and most of them move very quickly; many of them tend to spend most of their time high in trees, where they are often backlit or hidden by branches or foliage. Learning to identify these birds is a lot like learning the differences between one tea garden and another, or being able to just look at a steeped oolong leaf and know what cultivar it came from. Birding and tea are both areas where one can continually learn more, developing greater skill and greater nuance in perception.

How about you?

Do you value down time? Have you ever experienced server downtime? Do you think one of the most valuable aspects of tea is way it provides a restful break? Do you pay attention at all to wild birds? Have you ever been birdwatching, had a bird feeder, and you ever heard of eBird?

Let me know!