Sunday, May 26, 2013

Cherry blossoms and tea and cottage life

I missed the cherry blossoms in High Park this year, which is probably why I felt I really had to buy myself this insulated portable mug:


Comfort shopping probably has nothing whatsoever to do with it (or with my crazy yarn archive, either).  Who wouldn't want a sealable cup like this to make life less spilly while taking their tea down the lake at the cottage?

Unfortunately the only way to acquire this particular design of tea tumbler was to buy the whole gift set, aka pay for the tea that goes with.  So I did (clearly I really felt hard done by about missing the cherry blossoms.)

Green teas and floral teas fall into that vast receptacle of 'things I'd love even to like', so I wasn't expecting much from my first brewing attempt. 

In good news, the tea strainer that tucks neatly into the tumbler is awesome! 

In bad - gleah.  Even with honey in it, ew.  I could not drink this if it was a magic potion that instantly melted away every inch that stands between me and the cardi I started ages ago and isn't going to fit when it's done unless I find some magic potion or, you know, exercise daily and ignore bread and chocolate for the next four months.

But back to the good news: rehydrated and dumped from the strainer, the tea components are pretty cool:


Okay, maybe beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I think the unfolded leaves look fragile and lovely, and I also see some lemon peel and a cherry (or maybe a rosehip?)

And let's not forget: tea leaves! My Auntie Bert used to read tea leaves.  I wonder what she would make of these?  You're not supposed to read your own fortune, but I think I see a tree laden with branches almost obscuring its trunk there, and if it turned out that this particular arrangement was saying something about four feet of beech tree impaling the shingles on your cottage roof, the reading would have been dead on.

(the weather report up there says Rain On Tuesday.  I'm hoping my good friend Don can get up on the roof to put tarp over it before that.)

So: that's how my weekend is going.  Yours?

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