Amy knew a lot about interior design and creating a beautiful space. She had spent her college time studying art, art history, color theory, music, theater and lighting design. She understood set design, creating mood with lights and gels. She could shape a room using the same furniture and to make it formal or sensual just by placing things in different areas. She was well studied on woods, wood grains, tiles and stone. She would talk for hours about the difference between a traditional chandelier and a modern chandelier. Creating beauty was her life ambition and her life work. Amy had been the interior designer for dignitaries, Hollywood producers, celebrity musicians and even a Saudi king. Her reputation was climbing into the stratosphere where everything she did was lauded. She was at the point in her career where she could roll a wheelbarrow of manure into the middle of a living room and half the critics would call her brilliant. Then she met Tara working at a diner and her world was flipped upside down.

Tara lived in a small one bedroom apartment in the middle of the city. Tara was an artist and and was a student at a nearby Zen monastery. She earned just enough to pay her bills and take care of her essential needs. She had a broad knowledge of native arts and the organic materials used to create a vast color pallet. Amy was interested and the two of them met later for coffee. Amy boasted a bit about how she could turn any space into a place of beauty. Tara listened and smiled before asking if she had ever seen a place that was perfect as it was. Amy stated that she would return to her greatest interior design successes and always find something more that could be done.

Tara invited Amy back to her modest abode genuinely interested in seeing what she thought could be done to improve the tiny space on a modest budget. Amy loved a challenge and happily went along. When they got to the outside of the apartment Amy could see she would have her work cut out for her. The building was stuck between two others offering no light from the north or south. Amy considered the problem as they walked up the landing. The climb ended when the stairs ran out, five flights above the street. Tara unlocked, pushed open the door and stood aside for Amy to enter.

Amy walked in and stood in the front hall. The apartment looked like a garden. There were no paintings on the wall, no shiny stainless steel. The rooms were almost empty except for simple wood furniture, rugs in earthen shades and plants. Tara created a sanctuary in the apartment with bamboo, ficus, palms, flowers and other plants. Her living room had a water fountain bubbling in the corner. The walls had ferns spilling off them and the bed was tucked in a nook that seemed like a tiny meadow. It was a place of simplicity and for the first time in her life Amy could find no way to improve a space.

There was a glass with a single rose sitting on the table by the bed. The red rose stood out against the green ferns tumbling down the wall. Amy was speechless and from that day on committed her work to organic beauty and the use of what nature had to offer.