Not for the first time, I am in our front yard pondering the uses to which I might put a decoction of mole. The garbage truck driver has stayed to chat and suggests that the pernicious insectivores are here because we have the best dirt in the neighborhood. I chuckle, then recollect that the pieris japonica blooming in the garden is poisonous; Perhaps, I think as a fribble, I can shape one of the leaves into the form of a grub. The whereabouts of the burrowing pests are concealed beneath the irriguous soil of the lawn; the evidence of their presence mounds of fresh leavings from their higgledy‐piggledy habits. They are a perennial antagonism of the homeowner wanting to tend a patch of grass that has not been profaned by nature amok. A flamethrower applied to the beasts would fetch the summit of jollity.

In the sky I see spring on the march. It takes no time to renew a sensation of tumbling round a continuum of metempsychosis, as the faults of memory shatter the plain truth that all of the springs I have lived fit into this one life. The fugacious span of each season of the year quickens the observer to make comparisons with those past, cataloging all for review when living becomes less riotous and a moment is freed to muse upon the meaning of it all. Time flies. When he was 65, Leon Trotsky noted that (o)ld age is the most unexpected of all things that can happen to a man.¹ Soon to inaugurate the endmost year of my youth, I become uncustomarily still as a pond in the twilit spell that follows an afternoon breeze.

Now seized by thoughts of the senior discount on a Grand Slam breakfast at Denny’s , I should probably eat something. I prepare most of our meals from fresh ingredients — I enjoy cooking, and my acquaintance with the Hippocratic aphorism skilfulness takes time and life is short (Ὁ βίος βραχύς, ἡ δὲ τέχνη μακρή) gives cause to carry on. The pages of my cookbooks are filled with margin notes. Today, though, lunch will very probably consist of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the preparation of which I long ago mastered.

The garbage man has returned to his rounds. I push my wheelbarrow to a rise in the lawn allowing me to surveil its entirety, and whisper an oath to the moles.

Update February 5, 2023

The moles have continued their hypogean depredations, and the pieris japonica is once again anticipating spring. To claim I am at wit’s end over what to do to rid myself of these trespassers would be a confession that my wits have a limit, a calumny if ever one were spoken.

No, I have ideas. The local hardware store employs a woman known for her arsenal of solutions to the problem of moles. I will be speaking with her anon.