enough.
on flowers, dreams, and the moving horizon of more...
What’s enough? Tell me what enough is. Because if we can’t measure enough, how will we ever know when we’ve done, made, created, or become enough? When “enough” is undefined, we’re playing a game we can never win, because there will always be more. The horizon keeps moving, and it’s truly never done.
The answer isn’t a number, it’s a feeling. I love collecting stories, flowers, moments, scents, observations, and beauty. But somewhere along the line, every collection became a project. There is a weight that comes from carrying every version of the future at once.
Beauty and expansion have a little way of carrying me away. Last season I grew a massive garden while simultaneously harvesting screenfuls of flora from the field. The wild kept blooming and I kept plucking and creating non-stop for months. I created bags of herbs for tea, fairy dusts and cedar sticks for burning, along with three sizes of every tincture, oil infusion, and tallow balm. I had nearly 100 SKUs complete with labels and product descriptions, photography, then an Etsy shop, and a website while simultaneously doing the farmers market every Saturday.
Why the hell did I do all that?
There is this voice that sounds like something out of a horror movie, whispering in my ear: More is more, Amy. Come on, take advantage of this time. You’ve got your flower ranch now. Don’t waste it, hustle harder. Show those flowers what you’re made of. You’re here, look at all this abundance, surely you can squeeze more out of it.
And fuck, I did.
Nothing gets me more excited than wood and basketfuls of wylde gold. I genuinely love exploring the depths of flowers and plants, not only for their beauty, but for their medicinal and energetic qualities. And I love making things beautiful. And then there’s that LA girl-boss hustle culture which was forever imprinted into me.
I wish I had stopped more often to smell all the flowers I grew. There were so many, it was overwhelming at times. Everything I’ve asked for, I’ve received. Then life goes ahead and provides more contrast. Wanting more is inevitable.
Sunday morning I took my boys out. The rain had just passed, the sky cracked open, and off we went. My temptation to forage was peaking, but my boys are not the most cooperative foragers. I had a fleeting thought to bring them home so I could gather more.
Then I paused.
Forgo the walk and bring them home so I could go back out and do more gathering alone? No. I wanted to be with my dogs, just appreciating the gorgeous shades of pink and bright yellow nature is giving right now. We continued along together and I casually collected a generous pocketful of wild roses, clovers, and buttercups.
It’s my first season in the Cariboo, and a whole new world of flora to explore. But with just a pocketful of roses and my dogs beside me, my body said: “Actually, I’d like to just be here.” That’s a very different energy than “work harder.” Somewhere along that trail, I realized I’m not meant to manufacture every beautiful thing I encounter. The point is, here I am on the mountain I dreamed of, in the wild West, in a forest with a creek running through it, still wanting more fucking basketfuls.
Perhaps that's the whole point, I’m just supposed to be here smelling the roses, and maybe I don’t need more basketfuls of bounty. Maybe a pocketful is enough. Reflecting on my last chapter gives me a sense of pride mixed with grief, and my second realization: exhaustion.
I drove across the country late last fall, built the cabin over the winter, and now that build mode is complete, I found myself right back in infrastructure mode, then garden mode, then the more zone. Gardens. Logs. Dirt. Maybe if I plant three kinds of those over there and just a sprinkle of four kinds of these over here. More, and more, and more. It's its own kind of hunger.
No. Baby girl. Slow down. Rest. What if this chapter is about receiving the forest's finest. We didn't know we came here to rest. To walk in it, not just work it. It's walking through the woods with my boys and the scent of a rose in my pocket while thinking about how wild life is, and how the heck I ended up here on this particular mountain living another manifested reality inside the dream I just dreamed.
Rest is not a symptom. It’s part of the rhythm. Flowers close, trees go dormant, the land pulls inward before it pours outward again. This chapter is about soaking in the land. I'm just here to receive the forest's finest. So far I haven’t discovered whether it grows hot, capable woodsmen.
Research is ongoing. A long walk in the woods and a nap are enough for today.
When we give energy an outlet, we help our nervous system regulate, relax and let go of thoughts that contradict desires And, the more relaxed we are, the better we tend to be at everything. We think more clearly, move differently, and even look better. It’s a whole body experience. I like to think of it like an oil change for the mind. Clear the gunk and tune the senses, then navigation through the world becomes much easier because the signal is clear.
