environment - The Seventh Sphinx

This is the famous and extremely pleasant Jade Tie Guan Yin tea steeped in a cast iron tetsubin. The tea is light and distinctly floral. I steeped it in a very inattentive way and still had no issues with bitterness or overextraction, though I added a bit of honey anyway, to emphasize the natural honey note and soften the green (leafy) element.

I got a selection of the most popular traditional Chinese teas from TeaSpring and am working my way through them, albeit at a glacial pace. I’d like to develop tea rituals and make an effort to drink more of it (and less coffee, or certainly less mediocre coffee).

I love the glaze and the delicately fluted shape of this Japanese cup. It’s a bit ridiculous how much I think about cups and glassware lately.

I don’t have the best track record for keeping plants alive. I wanted to have something green and living my room, though, so I decided to find some hardy succulents able to survive my attentions. They can thrive in dry, low light conditions, and instead of growing weak when they reach the maximum size their pot allows, they simply stop growing. Put them in a larger pot, and they will grow a bit more.

These are the plants for me.

Also I find a lot of the shapes and structures of succulents appealing (read: cute). I’d like to get more.

I picked up an adorably fuzzy panda plant.

I combined a jade, a zebra, and an elephant or rainbow plant in another pot. Called an elephant plant (portulacaria afra) because native to South Africa and elephants eat them. How cool?

Put a small carved elephant in the pot and immediately it took on the look of an oasis diorama. I quite like that.

They are cheering up the windowsill considerably, along with some lavender plants (different lavenders, there are so many lavender varietals) I haven’t killed off yet. There is hope for me, still.

Category: environment

tea time

weekend distraction: succulents