My secret weapon for cramps. Straight from the garden.

I love my garden space in my back yard. It literally makes my whole day to be in the back yard with the kids. I could be stressed from the day at work or just need a moment to decompress. Something about having my bare feet in the dirt, walking through the grass. . . It's a feeling I can't quite explain to anyone I meet. Either you have the same passion or you don't. Anyways. I planted marigold seeds and was pleased to discover that not ONLY are they great for repelling all sorts of pests from the garden, but they also can be used to make a tea that helps with period cramps! SOOOOO Tada!!! I of course tested it and now I have a recipe to share with you! 

So I love mint tea so to make this tea something extra delicious I took two sprigs of mint from my garden and 5 marigold blooms. I washed all of it before using it and then proceeded to take the leaves of the mint off the sprigs and put them in a small bowl. 

With the marigold blossoms you want to ONLY use the orange petals, and you can easily separate the petals from the sepal. I just squeeze gently on the top of the flower and hold the sepal (that's the green part that the flower is coming out of if you don't know) between my thumb and pointer finger.  The petals should slide right out and I just dropped them in the same bowl. 

You can wash them again if you want to but I was pretty thorough so I didn't feel the need to do so. 

I put them straight into a loose leaf tea infuser. I got mine from Teavana but you can get one off of amazon for a decent price. I poured boiling water on top of them and let the leaves and petals steep for 5 minutes. The tea should be a nice golden yellow color and actually I was pleasantly surprised that it didn't need ANY sweetener at all. The flowers gave it a sweet hint and  the mint just made it amazing. 
Growing my own tea has been an awesome experience. I definitely want to explore more with different types of tea and I would LOVE to know if you try this and what you think! 

information on the benefits of marigolds can be found here! https://draxe.com/marigolds/