The cup was a gift from a friend for a purple spring weekend a couple of years ago.
The Secret Garden tea was a mixture of peppermint, fennel and chamomile – chosen as much for its matching tin design as its calming qualities.
The morning was an ambivalent one. Couldn’t decide between sunny and hopeful or dreary and overcast. Moods shifting like the swiftly-moving sky. Spring a master of the capricious.
Awakened by the kettle’s scalding water, the dried flowers and herbs come back to life – the familiar magic of tea calling from centuries past, lives and lovers crossing time and space to make themselves known, to be unforgotten. Tea is the promise that even when a flower dies, its petals dried and desiccated, its soul might continue, might find purpose and be reborn.
Tea captured in a cup, cradled in my hands, diminishes the chill of morning.
Tea stilling time, bringing clarity and clouds, swirling like the sweet nectar on the lips of a Hoya bloom.
