Garlic Follies

Yesterday morning, true to my word, I brewed and drank a cup of “centenarian tea.”

It took me a while to get up my nerve, however. First I fed the dogs and changed their water. Ditto the goats and chickens. I gave Lexi her meds, and brushed her teeth and Wolfie\’s. I carefully misted all my house plants.

Then I had breakfast: a slice of rhubarb bread and a cup of regular green tea.

Thus fortified, I heated some water, and pounded three large cloves of garlic in my mortar. (Not being a centenarian yet, I figured three cloves should do me.) It was disconcerting to inhale all that garlic aroma that early in the day. When the water was hot, I dumped about a cup of various mint leaves (apple, orange, and peppermint) and the garlic into the teapot and let it all stew for a while.

The resulting liquid looked like broth rather than tea. I could taste the mint, with the garlic as a pungent “end note.” It wasn\’t horrible—to my highly garlic-tolerant taste buds at least—but I don\’t think I could drink ever increasing concentrations of the stuff every day until I reach my second century.

I don\’t particularly want to live to 100, if that means being reduced to a little heap of bones in a wheelchair. On the other hand, a dry but spry version of myself, with wild white hair, running around in the woods chasing goats, making cheese, growing herbs…now THAT might be worth learning to like centenarian tea.