Florida Rose Rooibos

Florida Rose Rooibos

This is a story about two of my loves – tea and soap – and their happy marriage.

The story starts back in the summer of 2011, when I – then living in the United States – went on vacation to Florida, where I’d never been before. I was staying with a friend who invited me over, and her husband picked me up at the airport. Coming from Washington, DC, which is yucky and humid in the summer, my first thought was that “they probably steep their breeze in their pine forests here” – it smelled so woodsy. My stay was great, I enjoyed the white sand and the bath temperature ocean water – my experience with the ocean is mostly limited to Southern California cold streams, so Florida was quite a contrast.

When I only had about a couple days left, I decided to go see this beautiful Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota. When I say a museum, you are probably picturing a gray building with paintings and artifacts – but this was different. It was a whole grandiose park with the statue of David and fountains and a big pink-walled http://www.honeytraveler.com/pharmacy/ gallery and a dazzling mansion right on the waterfront of Sarasota Bay. You could spend all day there. There was also a large Italian style rose garden there, and they sold Rooibos tea with the rose petals collected from that garden in the gift shop. I brought a large tin of it with me back to DC.

Fast forward 2 years ahead, and here I am, relocated to Europe and living in London, doing photography, writing and making soap and perfumes. When going through my stash of teas recently, I discovered I still had some of that Rooibos tea! So I decided to make a batch of soap with a strong brew of that Florida Rooibos. Every time I look at the result (which you can see in the picture) I think of where it came from and how little things in our life can manifest themselves later on – sometimes transformed into something else completely, but still reminiscent of our personal journey.

For more pictures and the ingredients list see my Rooibos Tea in the shop section of my website.