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Tried the lemon tin out of this collection and again, was pleasantly surprised. For a set of inexpensive “gift teas,” these haven’t been bad.

This is my kind of lemon. Not the sharp squeeze-lemon tartness that makes your eyebrows sweat and your eyes water. Lemon rind, lemon bread, lemon pastry kind of lemon. Furthermore, it doesn’t appear to be finicky. Didn’t wait long enough for the water to cool to proper “green” temperature, then got sidetracked helping my 20-year-old hunt for a favorite childhood blankie (makes a mommy’s heart all squooshy). And even after 6-8 minutes, it wasn’t bitter. Go figure. Pleasant side effect of a cheap green tea?

I have been longing for a substitute for the San Francisco Herb Co. green and lemon tea I can no longer find. This could be it.

Love our little neighborhood—-local constabulary stops to play basketball with the older kids and flash his lights for the younger ones, neighbors speak pleasantly, people drive carefully for around pedestrians and patrons of the ice cream truck, and when you find a tin of tea for a quarter at the citywide garage sale, you can be pretty sure nobody’s trying to poison you.

Actually, I paid the quarter for the tin—it’s adorable, a little red call booth. An ounce of looseleaf in good condition was just a bonus.

I don’t go seeking out tea with bergamot in it. But this, even though I can’t vouch for its age and freshness, is plumb tasty! There’s just enough bergamot to add a happy, lemony little bounce to each taste. Each variety of black tea makes its presence known; maybe a little heavier on the Darjeeling, but the Ceylon and Assam keep it from getting too astringent.

Best 25 cents I’ve spent in a while.

Good morning, all. I’m about halfway through this Upton sample packet, and I like it little better than I did at first. This morning’s cup has a little sweet pastry character to it.

Or maybe it’s just a pastry craving. After 48 hours of weather-induced anxiety and halfheartedly gnawing on fast food in various basements the past couple evenings, I’m hungry! (And safe, for which I am much more grateful. Son and husband are threatening to sell our worldly goods and move to a cave.)

Do your cuppa cravings taper off some as the weather (finally!) warms up? Here, Memorial Day pretty much marks the transition to one decent cup in the morning, then use up all last winter’s mezza-mezza scraps for iced tea until there’s a nip in the air again.

This one is decidedly mezza; one-dimensional. Maybe just a hint of copper in the sip. Eh.

Last of the sample, steeped strong outside in a mason jar; little sugar. More drinkable cold than it is warm, but still not one worth repeating. (With apologies to Upton…I hate not liking a tea.)

Just needed a swig of something cool after helping mow the mud—er, lawn, since I didn’t have a jug of better quality sun tea in the fridge. (Anybody seen the sun tea jug? How can something that big disappear from a garage?) Gold Peak is my hubby’s bottled drink of choice and the only commercially bottled tea I can stand these days. It’s not rank with citric acid. A good “it’ll do” in a pinch.

I bought a whole pound of this ages ago, and probably shouldn’t have; though it’s a good decaf, it’s now gone a little flat. Thanks to a suggestion from jacquelinem, I think I can salvage what’s left—a few hunks of brown rock sugar restored its depth of flavor a bit.

Still in search of the ultimate unflavored decaf black tea that has the flavor punch of its counterpart, but this one still qualifies as highly plausible.

This is one of my Adagio favorites. Sweet and creamy. Had a little steeping snafu this morning…the Hot Shot I use for quick morning out-the-doors was decidedly tepid. So I had to run water through the microwave and throw the steeping basket back in for a bit.

Reinforces the theory that this does better with cooler water.

I always approach floral teas cautiously; I’m not a perfume-y person and so many of them taste like cheap cologne (sorry, flower lovers). But this, a tastelet from a work friend who ran to our favorite little shop in NW Arkansas, is nothing to be afraid of.

The flavors run as advertised. Black tea—mild; lavender—plenty; jasmine—mild to minor, but that’s OK by me; natural flavors—I’m catching some vanilla behind it all.

One for milk and sugar and china cups and big hats and feather boas and stuffed animals.

If you haven’t, today you might say a prayer for the little girls in Moore, Oklahoma, who are without a “lovey” to hug. When I think where we were—physically and emotionally—24 hours post-storm, my heart hurts for those families.

Last full cup of the sample, managed to sneak it in before our first really hot and humid day of the season kicked in. (When you live in southwest Missouri, anything above 85 before Memorial Day spells trouble. There’s a giant National Weather Service bulls-eye over our entire corner of the state.)

But I digress. This black tea is stout enough to please heavy-duty Assam-ites, light enough to accommodate those who don’t want a black eye from the punch of the drink, and versatile enough to come out just right no matter how little care you pay to time and temp. Good, good stuff.