Jim Marks Send Message

Second steeping of yesterday’s leaves. Who knew it could be 73 degrees out with 90% humidity and feel like walking through pudding?

A pool party at the church
G’d up and others barbecueing
Ain’t no telling what your daddy and your momma doing
Chewing on these baby-backs popping bottles with these macks
Everybody swimming, backyard full of women
I’m entertaining folks
Gave the lil’ homie twenty dollars just to shine my hundred spokes
Coke with the Hennesey tends to be the remedy
Family and friends to me
Everyone pretends to be kin to me
I can’t wait until the Fourth of July
to pop some fireworks with my kids
and fly some kites high in the sky
See, it’s the family reunion
And down at the church house, they giving up the annual communion

It seems we made it to another summer
Yeah we came and come up
213 is more than friends
Yeah, we like blood brothers
Riding this ‘til the wheels fall off
Can you dig that?
We got this summertime anthem for y’all
We did that

We made it through winter
We made it through fall
We made it through the spring time
Tough times and all
It’s good to see
I love the summer
I’m riding with the top down
Let the wind blow
Chillin’ with my love
Partying fo’ sho’
It feels good to see
I love the summer
Everybody if you with me sing

We got the game on lock
On the paper chase, can’t stop
On a roll, still hot
Gotta be top notch
I like the girls ‘cuz they hot
Plus I know what they want
They want the game that we got
Hold up baby girl I think not
I like the nasty girls from around the way
Hoppin’ in my gray drop-top Mercedes
Shouts go out to my sexy ladies
Just in case your man is hating
Tell your boy he better chill (Summertime)
Tell your boy he better chill (Summertime)

We made it through winter
We made it through fall
We made it through the spring time
Tough times and all

I’m addicted to the sunshine the way it make these women dress
Tank tops, flip flops, make this fella love the west
Different spots, even though different, it’s still crackin’
In Jamaica, Queens I sit back, live and collect the cabbage
It’s an affair that every state can relate to
And if you do what I do, then go on and follow suit
From Chi-Town to Diego, all the way back to NY
Stay fly, and never miss a piece of sunshine
When I’m at the church I barbecue for my kinfolk
Watch lil’ Elijah and lil’ Warren run the football
Got tea ta drink, but most of all the spirit
And it’s a blessin’ that the world wanna hear our music
The summer is an inspiration as much as the fast
And to my my fella Snoopdewoop, I love you fam’

Riding this ‘til the wheels fall off
Can you dig that?
We got this summertime anthem for y’all
We did that

We made it through winter
We made it through fall
We made it through the spring time
Tough times and all

Yeah, another summer
Kanye West good looking on the beat, nephew
213 reminding y’all put your guns down
Well spent summertime, let’s enjoy ourselves
We just wanna celebrate
You know what I’m talking about?
It’s too hot for all that
Yeah 213
Moving mountains y’all haha
All the time, yeah

Boy howdy do I like this tea.

I’m eating barbecued pork that I made from local, sustainably raised pigs, and sipping this tea and feeling very sort of rural Mainland China. Pork and oolong, right? ;-)

The spice and smoke in the meat is hiding the smoke and roast in the tea and bringing out all the sweetness it has. This is a perfect pairing and it is allowing me to ignore this terminally boring conference call on which I am stuck.

I got off my duff and made a fresh pot.

I love the way this tea tastes, but getting the liquor out of the pot once the leaves are wet is a nightmare. The leaves are so big they clog any kind of straining system, even pots with nothing internal at all, they clog the whole spout.

This may be a good candidate for getting a gaiwan or a professional tasting rig, or something. I’m just always so hesitant to work in small batches because the busy work day doesn’t allow me to brew a dozen small 6oz pots of tea.

I re-steeped yesterday’s leaves, because I am deeply lazy.

This is another sample from Kristin.

The dry leaf almost smells like dark chocolate. At first I assumed it was a flavored tea sample for Liz. But when I looked it up, it was clear that it was not. So, that’s a pretty neat trick for dry leaves.

The wet leaves have that sharp, roasted, almost citrus-y aroma too them that many darker oolongs have, in spite of this being a black tea on the listing.

It tastes more like an oolong than a black tea, as well. No astringency at all and the kind of roasted notes that have a sweetness to them. The way sugars caramelize in roasted garlic or grilled vegetables. Not that this tastes like either garlic or vegetables! It just has that same kind of sweetness to the roasted flavor.

It reminds me of Barley tea, is what it does. Except not that subtle.

At any rate, this is a good, soft black tea if you prefer to ease into your morning, rather than yesterday’s one-two punch with the mountain malt.

This is another sample from Kristin, for which I am grateful. :-)

I do not drink a lot of black tea, much less very many breakfast blends. So I can’t do too much with this tea comparatively. I can say that after the 3 minute steep, this cup is on the brink of being just a bit too astringent ~ but not quite. It is a big, bold, wake you up cup of tea, which as far as I understand it, is what breakfast blends are all about.

If nothing else, it goes perfectly with today’s dreary weather.

I had this iced, today, because we were in the mall and made the mistake of giving this absurdly over-priced company our business. I guess it beats going to Star$ for Tazo tea-bags.

They were out of the black dragon pearls so I had to settle for the hongcha. As with almost all to-go iced tea, it was over-watered down. Their shop is so loud I had no hope of shouting to her not to put all that much ice in it, I just didn’t want it to be too hot to drink.

A perfectly fine cuppa. I’m just fuming about what we spent on 6oz of chai.

I was missing the old stand-by, so I made a pot today. I’m nearly out of it, and I will probably let it stay barren until the autumn. Summers here are so brutal I don’t foresee wanting pu-erh (or lapsang suchoung for that matter). I’ll probably spend the summer drinking iced barley water. It is only mid-April and I’m already mowing the lawn every 3 or 4 days.