Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Australian Romance Reader Awards

Every year ARRA (that's the Australian Romance Readers Association) announces their awards, and I'm delighted to announce that my book, The Winter Bride, has been nominated for several awards in the 2014 awards:
Favourite Historical Romance
Favourite Continuing Romance Series
Favourite Australian Romance Author 2014
and my hero Freddy is nominated for the The Sexiest Hero from a romance published in 2014
The full list is here.


Thanks to ARRA for organizing this Reader's Choice Award and thank you to those readers who nominated my book.
The winners will be announced at the ARRA Convention in Canberra in March 2015.

Sunday, January 4, 2015

Growing tea


A few weeks ago, a friend was given a pile of peppermint tea branches and she was drying them to make tea from the leaves.  I wondered whether it might take from a cutting, so I begged a sprig from her. I wasn't sure it would work -- they'd been picked a couple of days earlier and the leaves were well wilted.

But I broke the twiggy bit in half and shoved the pieces in a pot, and nipped the growing tip out and because it was too small to make tea from, I popped it in a tiny glass. And lo! they're all growing. In the photo above, all those bright green leaves are new. You can just see a couple of the darker ones underneath.

The pot ones are doing so well, and even the little growing tip in a tiny glass has sprouted roots -- - you can just see them in the pic below. I'm so pleased. This isn't like the ordinary soft mint plant I've grown before, and it's delicious as a tea.

I always get a kick out of growing things I can use. Do you like mint or herbal tea? Or grow things to eat?