Saturday Sweet

I love Saturdays. Invariably there are hooligans mucking about on the street into the wee hours of the morning, but by the time I roll over and hug my feather pillow in the sunshine of the morning, they've deserted the streets and the only noises from opposite my windowpane are the pigeons, who coo and cluck in general good-naturedness.

This Saturday was a particular treat. The postman brought my recent purchase from The Exotic Teapot for which I was quite grateful, and the door buzzer was all it took to finally get me up for the day. I sprayed down my entire bathroom with Dettol to beat the encroaching damp and mold, and with the scent of bleach and productivity freshening up the air, I stepped freshly showered into my Saturday!

I'm a lover of tea. I haven't always been, but I'm a devotee of the heart now-- there's simply nothing better than a nice cup of tea precisely when you need it. Morocco brought fresh mint tea into my life, but my current fancy is this: my new glass teapot!

I will shamelessly admit, I like flowers. Yes, I'm a girl/woman/feminist/professional and I LIKE FLOWERS. I like the way they look, they way they catch and play with light, the way they sway in a breeze, the scent in a room, the softness of the petals and the expression on the face of the man immediately before he pushes a bouquet of them into you arms. I like flowers.
This tea combines my love of both TEA and FLOWERS! It's display tea, or blooming tea, and it's fabulous. You see, dear reader, why the acquisition of the glass teapot was necessary?!
Purchase of the actual tea is at the moment entirely through the tinterwebz, but I'm hoping that somewhere around here will start stocking it soon. Here's what it looks like pre-teapot:

A little like a tea tampon, I'll admit.

 They come in about eleventy-billion different varieties, and you can buy a sampler pack off ebay.co.uk direct from China for not very much. This does mean that you get a good variety of different ones to try and no idea what any of them are! It's fine, it's tea, you won't be disappointed. Next, introduce tea-pon to hot water:

It starts to open...

...And opens a little more...

In the meanwhile, I ate my delicious omelette with
onion, grated carrot, mature cheddar and various herbs.

And here we have it! I think this one is Lyrics,
though I could be wrong-- I'm going by the
picture on the ebay description!

See-- Flowers AND tea!

My little Moroccan tea glass, not filled with
mint this time, but rather the mouthful of
petals which is blooming tea.

Still going into the evening.

The nice thing about this type of tea is that you just keep topping up the hot water-- each bloom will give you at least two full pots of tea. I sprang for the teapot warmer stand, pictured above, and powered by a tealight. This I can get behind-- pretty, and keeps my teapot hot!

All in all, quite pleased with myself on this front. I've another teapot to fuel my quest to write up my dissertation and it's pretty to boot! Next instalment of Ikebana and the rest of the Marrakesh posts soon, dears, promise!