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When a pot of tea is finished brewing what do you do with the tea leaves?  It seems a shame to let the used tea leaves go to the landfill.  Well, here are some ideas I found on the web.  Mind you we're not advocating their usage and you might want to do a little more research before trying these.

1)  Use them on your plants as compost.  Apparently rose bushes love them.  Be warned because of gnats and bugs I'd use them on outside plants only. 

2)  Tea absorbs odors so you could put the spent tea leaves in a cheese cloth and place them in those fowl smelling areas no one likes to talk about--sinky gym shoes for example.  Also makes for a good refrigerator deodorizer.

3)  How about mouth wash?  Apparently, the third or fouth brewing once cooled makes a good mouth wash that helps fight cavities and gingivitis. 

4)  What about cat litter?  You can use your dried tea leaves as an anti-backterial, odor absorbing potty for your feline.  I haven't tried this, but apparently it works.

5)  Finally, my favorite:  Black Tea Wine.  I actually had this in England and can highly recommend it.  There's also a Green Tea and Ginger wine which I haven't tried. 

To close, remember you can brew tea from your leaves more then once.  A second brew or even a third brew is not unheard of.  Just remember you may need to experiment with the timing to get a consistant cup between brewings. 

I found this article while surfing Digg.com.  It sites a recent medical study suggesting tea may be better then water because tea hydrates as well as water does, but it also provides other health benefits.  Tea can protect you against heart disease, cancer, and even help strengthen your teath and bones.  Researchers aren't really sure why but think it has something to do with the abundance of flavonoids that tea contains.  Flavonoids help prevent cell damage.

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1. Tea contains antioxidants. Like the Rust-Oleum paint that keeps your outdoor furniture from rusting, tea's antioxidants protect your body from the ravages of aging and the effects of pollution.

2. Tea has less caffeine than coffee. Coffee usually has two to three times the caffeine of tea (unless you're a fan of Morning Thunder, which combines caffeine with mate, an herb that acts like caffeine in our body). An eight-ounce cup of coffee contains around 135 mg caffeine; tea contains only 30 to 40 mg per cup. If drinking coffee gives you the jitters, causes indigestion or headaches or interferes with sleep -- switch to tea.