I'm not sure what you're asking about tea/tea leaves. Can you rephrase it? i'll try to answer then.

And sure, boba tea counts. I quite like boba tea, and a lot of the milk teas have tea in them. For instance, most brown sugar boba would have black tea (I usually add some oolong too). 

i love boba tea. i'm taiwanese and I'm sure I don't speak for all taiwanese (just me, probably) but in a way I kind of like how boba is trendy because it gets people to know Taiwan more, where before it was more unknown

anyways, i've actually never tried making boba before. is it hard? 

I can understand that. I don't think there's as much of like Taiwanese stereotypes and such that affect more American or Western culture if I'm correct (i could be wrong), so i can see why it's nice for it to be known. But while it’s not nice to be unknown, it’s also not nice to be known because then there are those specific things and people use it against you. i guess it's probably just because a lot of white people (not all white people but generally) like to play with certain parts of Japanese culture like it's some exotic toy and then discard everything they don't like and be like "it's weird and i don't get it and it's bad" (and they usually only like ones that are more westernized. like a lot of sushi in America is not actually much like sushi is in Japan. I like california rolls and stuff though XD) and like even if it's not overt, I've seen threads on social media that are like "sushi is kind of gross, you should make it better by doing things that are just not sushi at all" which is just... odd. that sort of thing but it gets way way worse even before it gets into really overt stuff but we won’t get into that. i guess what i'm saying is that maybe it's kind of different, since I think people tend to know more about Japan than Taiwan for some reason. i also wonder if it depends on the restaurant; a lot of boba places I've seen are kind of seperated from anything Asian, except for maybe a fake-Asian name. but maybe one run by an Asian person would have more connection to the culture they're from. just a few thoughts

Boba is pretty easy to make. i'd say the main thing is to choose good quality ingredients and make sure you steep the tea well. If you want a standard black tea and brown sugar tea, I mentioned the mix I used above. I'd go with nice quality English Breakfast and Assam in particular if you can; it probably doesn't matter as much with the darjeeling because a.) that gets really expensive i think and b.) a lot of the flavors you'd get are probably masked more by the milk. Definitely steep some of the tea in milk. maybe steep for 5 minutes? I find 4 minutes better since it gets less bitter, and 4 might be all you need if you steep in milk too. If you can chill it overnight; if not you can put it in a bowl of ice water. make sure you know how to cook the boba you choose. it will probably take a long time but it will be better if you make sure it's cooked all the way and doesn't have uncooked bits in the middle. don't hesitate to go longer if it's uncooked! for the brown sugar syrup, i mostly use 1-2 tablespoons of brown sugar, maybe 3 tbsp of water, and 1 tablespoon of molasses (brown sugar is just molasses and sugar). if you can use dairy milk, a bit of heavy cream or half and half would probably be good along with milk. (Dairy free something thicker like nice oatmilk is nice (note i think oatmilk varies a lot) but the flavor of almondmilk goes well, so both is good.) you can also make a strawberry simple syrup and blend it with some strawberries and all milk (you can also steep some jasmine green tea in the milk (I usually do 190 f for 1 minute, but your jasmine tea might be different) which is super good). I usually add a bit of vanilla but you might not need that if you’re using dairy milk and if you’re doing it w/ jasmine tea it’ll mask the flavors a bit. I made a lychee tea once but i don’t remember how I did it. 

Oh, and you can also make a strongish green tea, chill it, and add a strawberry syrup. Oh and since that’s better less-sweet, you actually don’t have to use equal parts of sugar/water. You can probably just use a standard simple syrup recipe and reduce the sugar by half or probably even more (though at that point you might want to reduce the water a bit). you can do that with other fruits - i did a pineapple one and it was very good.

definitely find an actual recipe to at least use as a base though! But really the brown sugar tea is just milk, tea, and brown sugar syrup.  

about the milkweed - my mother sprinkled milkweed seeds from a neighbor's garden all over the backyard, and they sprouted and grew and had their own seeds, and now we're overloaded with milkweed. maybe the conditions in your garden aren't right? mine are in a place where they get sun, but are in shadow in the afternoons, and it's a cooler area of the garden. you could try getting some healthy seeds and just sprinkling them around in a part of the garden that looks suitable. i think autumn is the best time to do that, because that's when milkweed pods usually open and the seeds get naturally sprinkled.

Okay thanks Admin!

peppermint is basically impossible to kill! most herbs are pretty easy. will more later only also look into native plants for where you live, since you won't have to do much with watering and stuff and they're adapted to the conditions where you live. plus they provide food and shelter for local animals and pollinators and such. also look into deer-resistant plants! also fences exist and are amazing

definitely grow your own tea leaves! If you use a lot of peppermint, that's really easy to grow and can be around all year long. I don't think you can get peppermint from seed, so make sure it's a live plant; if it's a seed or labeled just "mint" it's probably spearmint (which is still a good tea, but different). i think you can find herbs at the grocery store sometimes. ummm for any mint make sure it stays moist. Moist doesn't mean "super wet" just moist. and it's best to water deeply less often since then the roots have to grow deeper.

also you can make a really strong green tea (like 3 teabags overnight), dilute it in one or two large watering cans, and water your plants with it. I've had really good success with that for catnip, which is in the mint family, and at the very least it doesn't hurt (as long as it's diluted).

watch for small spots or holes in the leaves for pests, which can usually be dealt with by soapy water for inside plants (but make sure you're not killing beneficial insects like wasps or lacewings, which eat pests!) 

also ideally get potting mix if it's in a pot, not soil for raised beds. Potting mix is specifically designed to work well in a pot, so not compact and drain well. You can also put small rocks at the bottom of a pot to make it drain better. But that's not very necessary for mint. it's probably not a bad idea to plant some outside and some inside - mint flowers are probably good for pollinators. You could even get one plant and propogate from a cutting if you wanted, but cuttings don't always work.

oh and also try to find a place where the air is slightly less stagnant if possible if the plant is inside. that helps a ton of things.  

I'm so excited for this summer because we have a grapevine and my family's horrible at eating fruits so the whole last summer we let them go to waste (my friend came over and ate one of the vine though (she's like that ;) ) and said it was superrr good!!) and so this summer hopefully we don't forget again!!

only part reply though it got long but - a lot of boba teas do have tea in them. Like brown sugar milk tea is made with black tea. some don't have tea, but most do so it's a general name :D 

and frankly i'm glad you're out of the loop with k-pop and anime, the fanbase can be really gross... also apparently the actual k-pop industry is really unhealthy for the k-pop stars, so that's not good either. so honestly i wouldn't really recomend getting into it. especially because a lot of it is not really a good insight into Japanese culture... like a lot of it is either kind of made for a white audience or made for an audience that has certain cultural things that might not make the same sense to a non-Japanese audience. but yeah what i'm saying is that i wouldn't reccomend you get into it. it's just kind of... the fanbase can get very bad very quick. 

and yeah, i don't know why Japanese and Korean things are trendy... maybe because so much of it is whitewashed in a way. and like i have never seen an East Asian character in any kind of media who has skin as dark as anyone in my family's honestly. and western media very much favors people who have whiter features and very pale, very clear skin. and in basically most of Asia (like I think this is a big issue in India and the Philipines are other places i've heard of it being a big issue) skin whitening is a big thing which is uhhh not good especially because it's bad health-wise. anyway people like... they like kawaii onigiri but how would they feel about a sea urchin egg onigiri? (my dad hates it so i'm scared of it so i don't know if it's good XD but) or like natto. granted natto does look kind of disgusting but i mean that's not really an excuse to be a jerk. and i hate it because they choose like - they like pretty sando (sandwiches) or boba tea all this stuff, but then they either see Asians as like "exotic anime person" or "weird'. idk it's just very weird. i don't honestly know if i look Asian or not because I'm mixed race w/ white, but i must have at least when i was younger idk. or i just very much acted Asian. or both. anyway what i'm trying to say is that it's very much "pick and choose". 

anyway that was a lot to say that it's not really a good thing... but if i have the time i'll look into those musicians! if you want to give more recs i'd be interested but no pressure. also i'm working on describing Hawai'i - it's hard to condense into a post heh. you might find it interesting that most of the time people (even schools and such) don't have air conditioning and just leave a window open. there's usually a decent breeze.

the biggest strawberry got eaten by a slug *sobs* where are the toads when you need them

could you put a fence or something around the apple tree? fences are our best defense because we have a lot of wildlife, which is mostly intentional. it'd be really cool to have a fruit tree!