Happy Sweet Tea Festival Weekend!

Tomorrow is the big one. The Sweet Tea Festival takes over Hutchinson Square from 10am to 4pm, and if you missed last week's issue, it has everything you need on street closures, parking, and the Sweet Tea Contest. We opted for the experience of the Sweetest Third Thursday last night for our family and that was a great pace for us.

All of that sweet tea talk sent me down a rabbit hole this week about where the tea actually comes from. The answer is about an hour away, and the story starts right here in Summerville. So this week's to-do is a day trip to the Charleston Tea Garden on Wadmalaw Island, right as their harvest season winds down (and the temps are a little cooler to enjoy some time outside).

The middle of next week is full of free (or nearly free) fun, too: live birds of prey at Ashley River Park, the Summerville High homecoming parade, and a family music trivia night.

Next week, we'll fully embrace fall with features on local pumpkin patches, fall farm experiences, and the best places to find delicious seasonal flavors around town. We've already kicked off the season at home with apple cobbler and pumpkin pancakes, but it's still a little hard to get into the fall spirit when it's 90 degrees outside! Hopefully cooler weather is on the way. One things to keep in mind if you’re ready to jump into fall is that Westbury Farms in the heart of Summerville is having their fall kick off celebration with u-pick pumpkins, a corn maze, live music, family games and food trucks from 10am-5pm Saturday and Sunday.

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Summerville calls itself the Birthplace of Sweet Tea, and there is some real history behind the nickname. Over a hundred years ago, Dr. Charles Shepard grew award-winning tea at the Pinehurst Tea Plantation right here in town. After he died in 1915, his tea plants grew wild for decades, until the Lipton Tea Company moved the survivors to a former potato farm on Wadmalaw Island in the early 1960s. That farm is now the Charleston Tea Garden, and its story starts in Summerville.

I love this one for kids, because "this is where tea comes from" is a lot more interesting when you are standing next to 127 acres of it.

The garden is at 6617 Maybank Highway on Wadmalaw Island, roughly an hour's drive from Summerville. It's open Monday through Saturday from 10am to 4pm and Sunday from noon to 4pm. The factory tour is free. You walk along a gallery that looks out onto the production floor, with equipment on display and TV screens explaining each step. There's also a Tea Bar where you can sample their teas hot or iced, and a gift shop full of loose leaf tea and tea gifts.

The trolley is the only tour they charge for, and it's the part my boys would care about most. It's a 35 to 40 minute ride out through the tea fields, with a stop at the greenhouse where you get off and see rows of tiny new tea plants. Tickets are $16 for ages 12 and up and $8.50 for ages 4 to 11 when you book at least 24 hours ahead, or $18 and $9.50 inside that window. Kids 3 and under ride free, but they still need a reservation made 24 hours in advance, so book ahead even if your littlest won't cost you anything. You can reserve through their trolley tour page or by calling 843-559-0383.

The garden says harvest ends in late September or early October, so the next couple of weeks are your last chance this year to see the fields before the plants rest for winter. If seeing the harvest equipment actually running matters to your crew, call ahead. The fun part of visiting in the fall is that the Camellia Sinensis plants bloom then, which is the plant that gives us White, Green, Oolong, and Black teas.

If you've been, I'd love to know whether the trolley held your kids' attention the whole way!

Next weekend is on the quieter side, but the middle of the week is packed. Here are three worth planning around, and all of them are free or close to it.

Birds of Prey at Ashley River Park
Tuesday, September 22 | 10–11am | Pratt Pavilion, Ashley River Park, 200 Renken Rd. | Free with park admission ($2 per person, ages 3 and up) or an annual park pass

The Center for Birds of Prey is coming out to Ashley River Park to talk about the birds we see and hear around here, and they're bringing some feathered friends with them. They may even do a flight demonstration. There's no registration, so you can just show up. A weekday morning, a shady pavilion, and a live raptor up close sounds like exactly the right amount of excitement for a toddler on a Tuesday.

Summerville High School Homecoming Parade
Wednesday, September 23 | 6:30–7pm | Starts at W. Doty Ave. and Magnolia St., ends at John McKissick Stadium | Free

Little kids and parades are a perfect match, and this one only lasts half an hour, so it fits before bedtime. Pick a spot along Magnolia Street, bring something to sit on, and wave at the high schoolers. Street closures start at 4:30pm along Magnolia at W. Doty, W. Richardson, and W. 2nd through W. 6th Streets, so if you live along that stretch, plan your evening errands around it.

Family Trivia Night: Music Trivia
Thursday, September 24 | 6–8pm | Rollins Edwards Community Center | $3 per person ages 5 and up

Summerville Parks & Rec is hosting a music-themed trivia night with questions on country, pop, rock, R&B, and more. Teams are five people ages 5 and up, and younger kids can come along without counting toward your five. That makes it a good excuse to rope in grandparents or a neighbor family. If you're coming solo, there's a sign-up sheet that night to get matched with a team. Register here.

Also on Thursday evening, Dorchester Paws is holding its Remember Me Thursday luminary ceremony at Azalea Park from 6 to 8pm. Participants light lanterns and walk with their pets to honor animals and raise money for pets still waiting on homes. If you have an animal lover at home, it's a gentle, meaningful way to spend an evening.

Going out for sushi is one of our favorite date nights. Our usual spots are Yokoso and Wild Ginger, mostly because they're close to the house, but we recently decided to switch it up and try Wasabi in the Azalea Square area and we were glad we did!

The restaurant is split into two sides: a hibachi dining room where chefs cook and perform tableside, and a regular sit-down side for sushi and entrées. We opted for the non-hibachi side, and even on a Friday night we were seated right away. The staff was attentive the entire meal, which made for exactly the kind of relaxed evening we were hoping for. Right next to our table was a koi pond that was fun touch to the dining experience. We watched several little ones wander over to check it out throughout dinner, and we already know our boys would be obsessed.

The sushi menu is deep and worth exploring. Wasabi has been voted "Best Sushi" and "Best Japanese" by Charleston City Paper and "Best Asian" and "Best Sushi" by the Summerville Journal, so you're in good hands. Standouts include the Asian Pear Roll, the classic Spicy Tuna Roll, and the fun Octo Roll. Daniel and I appreciated that every roll on the menu had a picture with it because sometimes that’s the exact help you need to decide what you’re in the mood for. If you're going the hibachi route, every entrée comes with Japanese clear onion soup, salad, hibachi stir-fried vegetables, bacon fried rice, and Wasabi's own secret sauce. There's also an Early Bird special (4:30–6pm weekdays, 12–5:30pm weekends) if you want the best value, plus a full bar with Japanese-inspired cocktails for the grown-ups.

While we kept it low-key on the sushi side this time, the hibachi room was full of families having a blast, and we've already decided that's our next move with the kids. They think watching Dad grill in the backyard is a five-star event, so a chef flipping shrimp and lighting an onion volcano might genuinely blow their minds. It's the kind of dinner that turns an ordinary weeknight into something they'll talk about for days.

Wasabi is at 202 Berkeley Circle, Summerville. Hours are Monday–Thursday 11:30am–9:30pm, Friday 11:30am–10:30pm, Saturday 12–10:30pm, and Sunday 12–9pm. They accept reservations and call-ahead seating to cut down your wait.

One of the greatest parenting lessons I'm continually relearning is this: stop trying to predict how everything is going to go.

As parents, it's so easy to let our minds race ahead. One hard moment happens, and suddenly we're imagining how the rest of the day, weekend, or even week is going to unravel. But this week reminded me—again—that most of the time, we simply don't know.

While we were traveling, one of our boys woke up in the middle of the night and got sick. Immediately, my mind wanted to jump to all the "what ifs." Does this ruin the trip? Is everyone else about to get sick? Should we start changing our plans Instead, I tried to take it one moment at a time. The next morning he woke up completely himself, and we enjoyed the rest of the trip with no one else getting sick.

A couple of days later, my youngest woke up in one of those moods every parent knows well. Every suggestion was met with the opposite response, and since preschool drop-off has been a little hit-or-miss lately, I was already preparing myself for a difficult morning.

Instead, thanks in large part to his wonderful teachers, he had one of his best drop-offs yet. His whole mood turned around within minutes. It was another reminder that our predictions are often wrong. Sometimes things go worse than we expect. Sometimes they go much better. Sometimes the right response is to stay the course, and sometimes it's to be flexible and change plans. But worrying about how everything might unfold usually doesn't help us do either.

So here's my reminder to myself this week—and maybe to another parent who needs to hear it too: Take today for what it is. Don't borrow tomorrow's worries. More often than not, things have a funny way of working themselves out better than we imagined.

Love,

Courtney, Daniel, and the Berk Boys

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