Photograph: Jonathan Knowles/Getty Images
Caffeine makes us more energetic, efficient and faster. But we have become so dependent that we need it just to get to our baseline
Tue 6 Jul 2021 01.00 EDT
After years of starting the day with a tall morning coffee, followed by several glasses of green tea at intervals, and the occasional cappuccino after lunch, I quit caffeine, cold turkey. It was not something that I particularly wanted to do, but I had come to the reluctant conclusion that the story I was writing demanded it. Several of the experts I was interviewing had suggested that I really couldn’t understand the role of caffeine in my life – its invisible yet pervasive power – without getting off it and then, presumably, getting back on. Roland Griffiths, one of the world’s leading researchers of mood-altering drugs, and the man most responsible for getting the diagnosis of “caffeine withdrawal” included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DS
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The Israela rose developed by Israeli mathematician Binyamin Amira, at the Wohl Rose Park in Jerusalem, April 2021. (Shmuel Bar-Am)
A Callery pear tree at the Wohl Rose Park in Jerusalem, April 2021. (Shmuel Bar-Am)
Zurich Square, in the Wohl Rose Park in Jerusalem, April 2021. (Shmuel Bar-Am) Door Opening, found in the German Garden at the Wohl Rose Park in Jerusalem, April 2021. (Shmuel Bar-Am)
Japanese Garden at the Wohl Rose Park in Jerusalem, April 2021. (Shmuel Bar-Am)
Second Temple-era burial caves at the Wohl Rose Park in Jerusalem, April 2021. (Shmuel Bar-Am)
Iceberg roses at the Wohl Rose Park in Jerusalem, April 2021. (Shmuel Bar-Am)
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In a little wooden shack, a light breeze tinkling its wind chimes and tousling tea bushes nearby, Islay man Les Wilson sips fine China tea served with simple ceremony in tiny cups.
But the award-winning writer and documentary maker is not in China. He is closer to Perth than Peking. Les is at the Windy Hollow Tea Estate, just north of Scotland’s Ochil Hills, where artisan tea producer Monica Griesbaum makes tea so good she is selling it to the Chinese.
The chrysanthemum is possibly the one plant, above almost all others, that symbolises winter, says gardening columnist
CEDRIC BRYANT.
Cedric Bryant.
FAMOUS 19th century plant hunter Robert Fortune, who introduced so many plants from China to the West, wrote in 1844: “The plants which stand next to dwarf trees in importance with the Chinese are chrysanthemums.
“So high are these plants held, the Chinese gardener will cultivate them extensively even against the wishes of his employer, even risking his job”.
One of the main reasons for its popularity is ease of growing and providing not only a splash of colour (but not blue or violet) well into autumn but also providing cut flowers in the home.