Chai Time

 

Chai supplies

I love a warm, spicy beverage on cold, wet winter nights, and chai is my favorite. Because I’m sensitive to caffeine, I make my own chai. While Stash has a decaf vanilla chai which is handy when I’m short on time, making my own chai lets me adjust the spices to my preference. I’ll share a couple of recipes and the ingredients I keep on hand.

The first recipe I use is here. I make a double-strength batch so I have enough for a few days. When I want a mug, I add milk or milk and water when re-heating. Cloves, vanilla beans, cinnamon sticks, star anise and the other ingredients also make my spice cabinet smell wonderful.

I'll share two other recipes. One can be made with black tea or rooibos for a decaf version, and the other with carob and coconut. Both linked in this paragraph are from the site GrowForageCookFerment.

Chaga. It's not the prettiest fungus.

Another chai that I love which is also caffeine free incorporates a medicinal fungus, chaga. Chaga is reported to be a nutrient-dense,
antioxidant-rich, and adaptogenic fungus. This Masala chai blend from Euphoria Botanica is delicious, but does need to simmer for 20 minutes in order to gain the benefits of chaga.

Since Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow earlier this month, it looks like there will be plenty more time to enjoy some hot chai.

Source: https://www.groundhog.org/

 

 

 

 

What's New?

Photo by Esther Verdú on Unsplash

 I hope 2026 has been good to everyone so far. Instead of making resolutions in January, I set intentions. This year I want to be more internally and externally aware, listening to my inner voice and exploring new topics.

To start this awareness, I first had my chakras balanced. Yes, this may be a little woo-woo for many, but I’d never had this experience and it was very affordable. To my great surprise, I learned that my root (first) chakra needed the most work. This surprised me as I garden a lot, nurturing plants from the root up. That my creative (third) chakra was weak didn't surprise me as my creativity has been dull since late November.

Just before New Year’s Eve, I then had a chakra massage which was divine. The massage therapist used a different oil for each chakra and gave me a mantra to focus on while she worked. The mantras, in order from the first chakra (sacral area) to the crown (top of head) chakra are:

I am.  I am creative. I am powerful. I am loved. I am heard. I am connected. I am divine.

The massage was extremely relaxing and I hope to be able to do this

Photo by Uday Mittal on Unsplash

on each solstice and equinox. How about exploring new topics? Well—and I won’t go far on this one—early this year I read about an experiment scientists did where they measured 37 dimensions! What? How? Curiosity led me to watch a few videos on quantum mechanics. There is so much at least theoretically possible, but our human brains aren’t able to contemplate these dimensions. Thank goodness. 

There’s so much out there we don’t understand, don’t even know how to comprehend or measure. I have plenty to explore and learn this year. Here’s a dimensional brain-twister that I’ll close with: the tesseract. Wild!!

 

 

Another tesseract resource for those wanting to know more:  

https://www.scienceabc.com/pure-sciences/what-exactly-is-a-tesseract-real-life-geometry-4-dimensional.html

 

 

For the Birds

 

Like many people stuck at home during the big lock down in early 2020, we took greater interest in our feathered friends around the yard. We learned their calls and feeding habits—some are ground feeders, others prefer suet, and most enjoy the bird seed.

Our first attempts with seed feeders resulted in many squirrels in addition to birds. Too many squirrels! After an initial attempt to place the seed feeder on a shepherd’s hook, we found that squirrels could even climb the pole to get to the seed.

Yankee Flipper

Then we came upon the Yankee Flipper. It is motorized and weight activated. Birds can sit on it with no trouble, but squirrels go for a nice spin, which is highly entertaining. It has never harmed a squirrel, but I doubt they could pass astronaut training. 😀

 

 

 

Flicker feeder

Juncos, the predominant birds we have, are ground feeders and clean up seed dropped from the Yankee Flipper. In the backyard, we have a Steller’s  jay who regularly comes for a tossed peanut. And flickers love the special suet feeder that lets them rest their tails while they eat. 



 

Recently I discovered Bark Butter from Wild Birds Unlimited (WBU) and purchased the type that is spicy. This variety is supposed to be avoided by squirrels, but I’ve found they like it much more than the birds do.

WBU gave us a small packet of seed (top of page) to toss on our front doorstep at Christmas for good luck in the new year. I’m looking forward to watching as birds and squirrels alike gobble it up.

Transcription

Smithsonian Magazine

No, I haven't taken up medical transcription, though it might be easier to decipher than what I have started working on. With gardening done for the season, except for leaf raking which will go on the rest of this month, I needed something to fill that outdoor time. I’m still knitting kitty blankets for a local cat rescue, volunteering at a nearby food bank, and working on my third book. 

I looked around for another "project" to work on, and recalled an article in Smithsonian magazine about the National Archives needing people who can read cursive to help translate documents. (Article linked at the top of this page.)

Citizen Archivist 

This article describes the Citizen Archivist program. The dashboard page has several videos to help volunteers get started and I watched those before signing up. I quickly learned that being able to read cursive isn’t enough—one especially needs to be able to read some really bad handwriting and often on faded documents. 

Starting with the shortest, most legible pages I could find, I worked on a situation just after the emancipation in Georgia. Other documents were about deporting Chinese laborers who were in the country illegally in the early 1900s. These latter papers were a sad reminder of the state of affairs today, but also led me to learn more about the history at these times.

Then I discovered typewritten documents that also need transcription in order to help researchers who use these archives. Not only is this work giving me a way to contribute to the National Archives mission, but I’m learning intimate details about history.

This hurts my eyes and brain!

I’m still unable to help with the spidery, faded documents and tagging the photos and drawings is more advanced than I care to do yet. Tagging involves describing what is in a photo, such as names of people, places, and description of an activity depicted. 

I'm happy to contribute a page or two every few days, and delighted that cursive penmanship classes decades ago are proving useful.

Source

 

 

Shhh! Quiet Please

 

Photo from Unsplash

Found the problem

This month certainly started with a splash and a bang. Lots of banging. One Friday morning my husband alerted me that there was no hot water. A quick check of the hot water heater revealed the problem: the pilot light for the water heater was under water. A plumbing company very close to us got us set up with a new water heater amidst a lot of noise. The noise couldn’t be helped, of course, and we were thankful for the quick service. I was especially grateful for the calm and quiet atmosphere once the work was finished.

Unsplash

The following Monday, our furnace was scheduled to be replaced. That destruction/construction started at 7:30 a.m. and went continuously until 4:30 p.m. But wait, there was more noise in store. Tuesday the furnace ducts were cleaned, and those industrial vacuums are noisy!

 

 

Unsplash

As luck would have it, on Wednesday I was scheduled to work a very busy four-hour shift at the food bank to distribute food. Conversation is steady and often involves a lot of pointing and miming for our clients who speak little English.

Unsplash

By Thursday, I was so ready for a quiet day at home, for oleilu: a calm, unhurried state of simply not doing, achieving, or planning, just the quiet act of existing in the moment. This was accompanied by several cups of hot tea and crystal bowl sounds.

 

 

 

 

Quiet and mental calmness help me prepare and enjoy the upcoming busy holiday season in order to fully embrace the blur of celebrations to come. 

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