Optimism. And throwers of dirt.

    Optimism...or maybe just desperate hope. I put out my rain gauge as though there would be something to measure. And for once: the weatherman did not let me down. There hasn't been much rain. Much less than enough--we are still watering with shower warm-up buckets. But it rained the night I did all that gardening, almost an inch. And it rained about half an inch the next Sunday night. And the next. I hear tell that we may get some more rain this coming week.
    Please oh please.
    The wild oats and rattlesnake grass sprouted almost immediately. The tips of the blades now wave about four inches above last years leaves. I have to watch where I step, because mixed in with the grass are some very confused grape hyacinths. The grass will pop back up. The hyacinths are more fragile.
    Raised tunnels curve calligraphically around the old pine stump and the roots of the Chinese elm. The moles who have been quiet for the last several dry months came back immediately after the rain to stir things up. I'm trying to see this as a sign of underground health as I attempt to navigate the yard without breaking my ankle. Because this is how I am, I had to look up more about these guys. They are nowhere near as, um, cute as skunks, which probably contributes the the fact that there are lot fewer stuffed animals shaped like moles delivered for Christmas. The only popular-in-a-good-way mole I know of is in The Wind in the Willows.

I don't know...which one would your kid rather snuggle with?

   

    My favorite anthropocentric fact about moles is not a fact about moles at all, but about what they are and have been called. "Mole" is basically a shortened form of the Early Modern English (spoken between the late-ish 15th century and the mid-17th century) "mouldywarp"--dirt thrower. I love this. I think I may never call them anything else from now on.