I hear ya on the photos for the first half (or 5 minutes) of a project. I usually start documenting pretty well, then i get into the meat of the project and forget to document... I'm interested to see how your tea turns out.

Why did the leaf size make your tea expert bail? That seems odd to me. Does she suffer from an irrational fear of large leaves?

Megabontanophobia? (that's the best i could come up with)