Hi folks,

I am playing bookseller this week in MD and selling off the stock of my parents’ rare bookshop. It’s quite an ordeal, I’m sure you can imagine. (That photo is of my dad and me at a book sale when I was a wee lass.)

Coming from a family of collectors, it was a tricky emotional landscape to navigate as to how to move this book collection.

It kept me coming back to this question again and again. “When do you know you have enough?”Alternatively, “When do you know you have too much?”

This comes up with me again and again as a plant person. Always jonesing for a new variety, a new color, or shape.

I know that scarcity mindset and capitalism are two peas in a pod, and being a mammal means we need an abundance of resources to feel safe.

So how do you feel abundant and safe without overdoing it?

I don’t have the silver bullet, but I’ll share a little gratitude practice that helps me.

It’s a simple one - Every morning, before I get out of bed, just after waking, I come up with three things from the previous day that I’m grateful for.

That’s it! It’s super simple, but it helps keep me in the mindset of abundance and eases the feeling of scarcity.

I’d love to hear any rituals or ideas you might have on this topic!

Spring flowers are starting to bloom! CSA members, you will be receiving an email shortly with the details of your pick-ups. Still on the fence? We have only a few more spots available! Join us here.

Spring blooms need a few tricks to keep them happy. Here are my tips and tricks for perky spring cut flowers:

• Daffodils (all flowers in the narcissus family) secrete a sap from their stems for the first few hours after being cut. This sap can shorten the vase life of other species if combined too soon. Give daffs their own water source for at least 6 hours before combining them with other flowers in a vase with fresh water.

• Hellebores really need to have at least one flower on a stem to have gone to seed before you can successfully pick that stem. Then take a box cutter and make a couple of cuts longways towards the bottom to help it stay hydrated.

• Lilacs should be picked when at least half of their blooms are open. Then take your clippers and cut a slit at least an inch up the bottom of the woody stem. I also like to use the edge of the clippers to strip off some of the outer bark at the end. Then dunk into boiling water for 30 seconds and into cold water. No more wilting lilac!

• Tulip stems grow in the vase. Always tuck them deeper than you want, as they will quickly grow up and out of an arrangement.

• Finally - a quick reminder for ALL flower arrangements. They will be happiest for the longest away from direct sunlight and in a cooler room. And always keep your vases clean and refill your water every several days. Cut flowers drink from their whole stems!

Free community classifieds section

If you have something to share - a service, an event, an offering, or maybe even something for sale for the general Western Washington area - you can send me a couple of sentences ‘ad’ and a link. I’d love to connect my community with your work!

Here are this week’s classifieds:

• Saturday, April 18, Kristie Dahlia Home will lead a Thai Yoga Massage partner workshop 1-4pm at the Hive in Port Hadlock-Irondale. Thai Massage combines pressure, percussion, Buddhist lovingkindness practice, and yogic movement in a gentle, approachable way. Please come with a partner. We work fully clothed. No skill is required other than the ability to be on hands and knees on padded ground. By donation; all proceeds donated to the Jefferson County Foodbank. If this isn’t for you but you’d like to support our neighbors, you can donate to the Food Bank here. Register by contacting dahlia@beloved.org or 415 290 7476. More about Dahlia here.

  Sending you verdant green spring energy,
  Emmy and Kai