So many years ago, Mojo bought a tea plant. A real, honest-to-gosh, pluck-a-leaf-and-throw-it-in-boiling-water Camellia sinensis sort of plant. It was all part of her continuing quest for self-reliance and self-sufficiency; she thought maybe if she could have a personal source to supply her caffeine addiction it would be better than relying on The Man.

As usual it is extremely difficult to parse the complicated warp and weft (emphasis on the warp) of Mojo's brain mechanisms--let's go along with her and her claim that it's because she's just so gosh-darned BRAINY--but somewhere along the line Mojo had this vision of a beautiful sort of tea bush in her solarium, and she'd wander out to this lush habitat every morning in her bare feets and pluck a few precious leaves from this bountiful, thriving beast and make herself a nice pot of green tea every morning.

But then here comes reality, that big bruising bully. Because Mojo does not yet have her solarium of the gods (laziness), and her precious tea plant, so lovingly nurtured through the three years or so I've had it, is still alive in a very large pot, but that's about it. Well, um, it HAS grown, and it grows new leaves every year, but instead of being the thick verdant three-foot diameter ball of green I expect it to be it's still basically a twig. If I were only slightly more ambitious I could count all the leaves; offhand I'd say there's MAYBE fifty. So if I were to actually use the poor fellow for tea he'd be dead within a month.

So for now he is allowed to grow free and unencumbered, except for being in a big ol' pot. And every spring, one of Mojo's rites is to drag this puppy out of the kitchen and outside to sit on the wall for the summer, so he can grow and enjoy all that nature has to offer young tea leaves. And every fall, mid to late September, when the newscasters first start mentioning the word "frost" he gets brought back into the house, where he sits in a corner and collects dog hair.

Oh, and blooms. Because coming from a place with a longer growing season than Mojo can provide, Mister Tea Plant the past two years has thanked me for dragging him inside by blooming sometime in October and November. It's rather odd, for he is still nobbut a twig and I find it hard to believe a plant--much like a person--would expend so much useless energy in a feeble attempt to procreate. But I give him props for trying all the same.

So this year I thought I would document this spitting in the face of reality and take a picture of one of the blossoms. Because Mojo finds them purty, somewhere in the dank recesses of her cold, shriveled heart. And even though he seems a lost cause and I am always amazed when I drag him in every fall that he is still alive, I'm sorta rooting for Mister Tea Plant. Life just doesn't quit, does it?

Mojo