Of Tea and Herbs and Cucumber Water

Saturday afternoon, August 17, was just a perfect day for a garden tea. The house and the garden were lovely against the backdrop of a perfect summer day filled with sunshine and pleasantly warm dry air.  Twenty-eight guests and six staff members enjoyed a variety of delicious homemade  cookies and tea sandwiches, deviled eggs and scones all set out on the big dining room table at Glendower Historic Mansion.  Tea was served from the house's silver tea service and included traditional black tea and a special spiced peach tea. The peach tea was the most popular.

Out in the garden Mark Howard offered a very refreshing and delicious Cucumber Water to drink with jam sandwiches made with a sandwich press from Pampered Chef. Mark has promised to share the cucumber water recipe in the next post.

Herbal Bouquet

Everyone seemed to enjoy the herb garden talk. Guests learned about the various medicinal properties of herbs easily grown here in southern Ohio while they munched on Shaker Rosewater Cookies. Rosewater is an old fashioned flavoring which was often used in place of vanilla. The remaining Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake, Maine makes rose water which we sell in our museum gift shop.

 Several of the flowering herbs were used as garnish on the deviled eggs and the tea sandwiches. The tiny purple flowers of the anise hyssop graced the deviled eggs and open faced carrot tea sandwiches. Dill was the garnish for the open faced cucumber sandwiches.

Unfortunately none of the staff remembered to bring a camera, so I snapped this picture of a vase of herbs that were displayed at the herb talk.  Included are the bright blue flowers of borage, the purple blooms of anise hyssop, a common marigold, some late blooming hydrangeas and a sprig of butterfly bush. These medicinal herbs may not have a place in our medicine cabinets today but their lovely flowers are very attractive to both bees and butterflies making them well worth growing in any sunny garden.