brewing

The other morning I was brewing my first herbal tea of the day. I was using a small steel infuser ball, and it was sitting in a glass cup. Just at that moment the sun streamed through a temporary gap in the clouds, and bathed everything in warm light.

I picked the cup up ready to leave for my computer, and about a second later my brain issued a stop notice.

I had seen a particularly lovely reflection from the light going through the cup and onto the counter. I was going to ignore it, and get on with work, but instead, I quickly found my camera, replaced the cup and started taking images. I had to wait as the sun was playing tag with the clouds, but my patience paid off.

Then I had a look at the infuser in the glass cup. All the colour from the tea remained at the bottom of the water. Viewed up close the steel infuser looked stranger.

I’m often taken by how differently ordinary objects appear when you view them up close, or just examine them properly. We use so many objects every day we forget to consider them at all.

It reminded me of a photo I was pretty sure I’d never uploaded. I searched it out this morning and put it up on my Flickr stream, as it’s nicely themed with this post.

A couple of summers ago I grew a plentiful peppermint plant just outside my door. I had a glass teapot, and would infuse the leaves for a gorgeous peppermint tea regularly. It kept the plant trimmed, and made me happy. The bright, fresh scent alone was enough to put a smile on my face.

One morning I took this image of the light coming through the teapot and and how the leaves, light, and water interacted.

My teapot recently departed to the great recycling bin in the park, but at least I took the few minutes to stop, and consider how beautiful it looked that morning.