digging up some dirt

of daydreaming about gardening, book-writing (kind of) and distilling flower essences + my "currently reading" list.

from the journal of a sensitive mama

08.02.2026

Digging. The dirty-handed, muddy-knees, exhilarating kind of digging. Digging for snail-shells. Digging for bulbs. Digging for the sheer joy of pure, delicious digging.

We’ve been finding it exquisitely therapeutic, the girls and I. Whatever the weather, every afternoon we have stepped outdoors and gotten up close and personal with earth, dirt, and soil. It’s been especially wet here in central Italy: some of our favourite open-horizon activities, like chalk painting and soap bubbles, haven’t been viable, so we have resorted to good old elbow grease — and a generous dose of childish giddiness.

My eldest daughter even resolved to get the digging done while wearing her current obsession — a pink plastic tulle ballerina skirt (don’t ask) — so most afternoon there she is, trowel in hand, pink fluffy cloud hanging out of her mud-stained jacket, a rosy flush in her cheeks and a look of pure elation glistening in her eyes as she purposefully digs away a little bit here and whole lot there.

The daffodils we transplanted a few weeks ago are thriving and this small success has stoked the fire under my imaginary garden plans — just like my daughter’s, my enthusiasm is volatile and giggly: I am now positively itching to start a flower bed here and clear up some space for a vegetable patch there.

So now my “currently reading list” — anyone else here reading more than one book at the same time? you can find mine at the end of this post — has finally expanded to welcome manuals on gardening, growing, pruning, and propagating, gathered over the years spent daydreaming about having my own garden while living in London and, later, in Milan.

I can feel it — gardening will change my life. Gardening is the portal beyond which a new reality, a new era of living, of mothering, and being of service will unfold. And I am ready.

Now, I do not know the first thing about gardening and that is precisely what excites me. The opportunity to do something from a complete beginner’s perspective — to have so much potential for failure, for experimentation, for learning— feels like a current of electricity running under my skin. I can sense something inherently life-affirming about gardening — working with something that has a life and an intelligence of its own, where co-creation rather than control is the common ground required for mutual enjoyment and flourishing…it feels like entering an exciting new relationship, somehow.

This is how I am also feeling about my personal and professional journey. In a few weeks’ time, when Spring will begin unfurling into her most joyous and energized expression, I will be undertaking training in shiatsu and ayurvedic massage — all while deepening my ongoing yoga, embodiment, gentle coaching, and holistic health journey as a sensitive mama of two. To most of my family, this looks like a downgrade — like why…? Why throw away years of education and a perfectly good job to do…well, what is it that you do, exactly?

But I long to work with life — my own and others’. To co-create with aliveness, whether in my flower beds or on a massage bed. I long to use my hands and my heart, my very own human intuition, to make beautiful, miraculous, meaningful things happen. Not as the sole owner and performer of the magic, but rather as a co-creator — in the same way as I see writing and drawing/painting (two of my soul passions), where the words or the shapes on the page really come alive when another heart meets them and infuses them with their own precious nuances of meaning(fulness).

I wish to participate in the wider and wilder experience of aliveness, from the inside out. Every day. In every small, imperfect, organic way. With every part of my being.

For some reason, I am feeling called to work with what’s messy and real and imperfect and alive. Like me. To apply my devotion and energy to processes that will take time and trust to unfold, often revealing outcomes both sublimely surprising and unpredictably beautiful — nurturing souls and bodies, cultivating blooms and stories…within my inner realms and then beyond the borders of my own body and life.

I am sensing a subtle, yet powerful, tie between energy-sensitive bodywork and garden work. I suspect it must be the same intimate thread that ties together creativity and mothering — two realities that have transformed my life into an undeniably deeper and richer experience.

Only a couple of weeks ago, I was reflecting on how I feel that this newly started nine-year cycle is deeply entwined with a return to my body, to the child that still lives within me, to the sheer joy of letting joy be felt — in many ways the opposite of what these past years of adulting have been for me. It’s written all over the notes hastily scribbled in the margins of the books I’m reading, in the sentences slithering sideways across the pages of my journal, in the sketches traced with borrowed pens on the back of paper napkins — the intensity of them interrupting thoughts and workflows, demanding to be spelled out in broken lines and half-legible words on whatever surface is nearby so that the reality of them shall be seen.

Something about growing closer to Mother Nature, closer to myself. Something about tending to the soil — starting from my own sacred ground, a land that for too many years has survived on pushing, and cruelty and neglect alone, devoid of a loving touch, of trust, of basic care and respect. To become familiar (again…or maybe for the first time, really) with the body of the Earth and with my own, with the energy that inhabits us both, with the immense potential for life that resides within us, trusting in our shared ability to hold tender things safe and sheltered in the softest depths of our being and, when the time and conditions feel aligned, to bring them out into the light as the most precious and delicious of gifts.

Still hidden away in my old laptop, sits the draft of a book on these very themes —nurturing a daily existence in harmony with Nature from the inside out, reconnecting with the beauty and sacredness around us to witness the immense beauty and sacredness mirrored within us, mothering organically from the body and from the soul and from the land, distilling joy from life as it unfolds in the now rather than waiting to be “there”, allowing ourselves to be intimately and immensely human…

A project born long before I had even moved to rural Tuscany and abandoned in its early days (and the early days of my second daughter) — a bold and reckless action that came with the cost of turning down a publication offer. At the time, every time I sat down to write, something felt…off. It was the very attempt at writing that book that showed me that I simply wasn’t ready…I had the idea but not the life to put into it, to write it from.

So maybe there is a book, or more than one, in the making again somewhere in the future…but there is a whole lot of living that’s asking to happen now, to be embraced now, before it can be pressed neatly onto a page like a wildflower.

To use the beautiful words of Asia Suler from her enchanting and deeply healing book “Mirrors in the Earth” (you find it in my “currently reading” list below):

“Books take you on a journey. I’ve always known this as a reader but had no idea how deep that journey could go when I was the one doing the writing. […] every time I sat down, I found myself at aloss, unsure exactly what this book was meant to be about. […] It took me years to realize that the reason I struggled to write the book pressing inside of me was the very reason I needed to write this book. […] In the process, I became the person who could write [this book].”

So, do I know where this path is taking me? Not exactly…but I know the general direction where my heart is leading me — somewhere where gardens and souls can blossom, where the body feels like a cherished and loving home, where living and mothering and creating belong together like locks of hair entwined into a braid. And I know I deeply need and desire to walk it.

This is not a straightforward road, I cannot see the clean line of the horizon ahead of me, the terrain under my feet is varied and uneven, my steps, at times, unsteady. I have no guarantee that the seeds I am entrusting to the Earth will bloom. Many will be failed attempts probably. Others will be interesting experiments — maybe sprouting up somewhere unexpected, out of season, out of place, out of shade… Most will be precious lessons. Some, I am sure, will eventually surface bearing colorful petals, maybe even juicy fruits. Each one — a blessing in its own form.

And all the while, I am trusting, experiencing…and writing about it. For the first time in so long, I am meeting myself every day between the pages of my journal and nearly every week I show up in front of my keyboard and write — much like with my gardening, my body, my mothering and my path, holding no expectations of perfection, simply honoring the act with my honesty. And the more I write, the more I feel alive. The more I live my life, the more there seems to be to write about.

You are already doing it — claims without hesitation the oracle card I pulled for February in my Wheel of the Year spread. What if I was? What if where I am right now, who I am right now…was exactly where and who I am meant to be to bring my dreams to life?

notes from the garden

Birdsong — many of the birds that migrated to warmer climates earlier this winter seem to have come back. As morning grows brighter, birds and children seem to have started waking up earlier and now breakfast takes place with a window cracked open (come rain or shine) and the cheerful chattering of babies mixed with the gurgling-twinkles of bird conversations.

Daffodil flower essence — as elating as the idea of co-creating with life may be, the uncertainty that surfaces when walking the unbeaten track has been bringing up all sorts of doubt and vulnerability within me. The most tender parts of my being swing back and forth between the desire to embrace this unfolding and the fear of not being enough — knowledgeable enough, trained enough, intuitive enough, educated enough, wise enough, certified enough, talented enough…good enough.

And that’s where flower essences entered my life — after a dream in which my mother gave me a book about Bach’s Flowers “because it was weird and I may like it”, this week I have made my first-ever flower essence, following the instructions in Asia Suler’s book (I chose the organic apple cider vinegar version)…with daffodils.

When a flower becomes particularly prominent in your life, it’s because it holds a message for you — it brings you the medicine you need. For me, it had to be daffodils. This gentle yet fierce herald of early Spring blooms in the harshest conditions, wild and wise, wherever it is planted or forgotten, offering its sunny (and in the case of ours, Narcissus Odoratus, deliciously fragrant) chalices to any sensitive soul willing to pause a moment in contemplation and gratitude while braving the cold breeze of January and February.

Daffodil flower essence can help navigate life transitions with quiet strength and deep-rooted faith by allowing you to see your innate gifts and precious talents with clarity and trust. This is exactly what I need right now. So, as I take my home-made essence daily over the upcoming weeks and months, I’ll keep a record of any changes and shifts that will arise within and around me. But while my family rolls their eyes, sharing this precious witchy ritual with my daughter — hearing her thank the flowers and the Earth for their sunny gifts and “for being so beautiful and nice and being a home to the fairies”, watching her spy with hopeful eyes the glistening blooms as they swirl around in their bowl on the windowsill— has already lit a warm, luminous glow in my heart. As far as I am concerned, the flowers have already worked their magic.

---

My “currently reading” list

• Mirrors in the Earth by Asia Suler

• Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System as a Path to the Self by Anodea Judith

• One Simple Thing: A New Look at the Science of Yoga and How It Can Transform Your Life by Eddie Stern

• Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids by Hunter Clarke-Fields MSAE

• A beginner’s book about allotments and how to start yours in Italian

If you wish to read more about real gardening, while I work my way through it:

• Story and Thread by Lyndsay Kaldor: the most enchanting and inspiring writing about gardening, meaning-making, and seasonal living

---

A journaling question for you:
I’d like to invite you to reflect on the same question I am exploring here:

• What if where you are right now, who you are right now, was exactly where and who you are meant to be to bring your dreams to life?

• What may this season of your life be gifting you? How could it be preparing you along the journey towards your dreams?

• If you knew that what you desire was already meant to blossom for you at the right time, how would you navigate this season of your life?

---

Thank you, dear one, for reading my not-so-secret journal today.

With gratitude always,
Julia