Opening this package of cheap Jasmine tea was the most sensual experience in a week. As soon as I broke the plastic wrapping the scent of Jasmine flooded out of the package even before the inner plastic wrap was opened. Then there was the surprisingly precise beauty of the symmetry of the tea bags lined up perfectly in their package. I'm not a tea bag person, it's never as good as loose tea, but it does a passable job, the tea was fine but really it's the smell the that I like most about Jasmine tea.
Growing up in Irvine we ate dinner on the back porch most nights during the summer, there were large Night Blooming Jasmine plants around the yard, near where we ate, when dinner was done, as if on cue, the flowers would release their scent and we would be bathed in the scent of Jasmine, it was amazing. When I smell jasmine I think of my childhood, I think of dinners sitting with my mother and brother in the warm California evenings, of finishing dinner and going skateboarding again, and eventually sitting down to read. It wasn't a story book childhood, but I do have good memories of it.