quaint vignettes from my rural idyll

IT IS SPRING!
I have daffodils. I have vinca. I have snowdrop and crocus (somewhere) and best of all, I have a wreath of gentle, fragrant clematis armandii around my front window framing my little slice o' paradise.
I also have moles. No, not personal moles, you zany madcap person who is wacky, lawn type moles. Moles overrunning and undertunnelling my front and back yard. Moles chewing through the tether holding the water meter housing in. Moles burrowing around in my flowerbeds. Moles making little volcanoes everywhere.
Last year when this situation first began I decided to put the hose down one of the mole tunnels and turn it on full blast. Up washed a mole on a column of water, just like in a cartoon. The cutest, snubby, chubby, velvet soft little animal you ever saw, just like a hamster wearing catchers mitts.
As soon as he hit the grass he was off again digging away. I picked the little guy up by the tail and he just kept on furiously digging away in midair.
Awwwww!
So I let him go in the hay field across the street.
This year, everyone on Front Street has moles.

Yesterday the guy across the street ran the mechanical Opie around on his property. This is a chubby, hindslung tank full of strained cowshit that drives around and around spraying seagull food behind it in a great fan, like a peacocks tail. Guess what my house smells like this morning? Patchouli incense. 15 tons of patchouli incense. With more on the fire even as we speak.

Springtime means time to mow. Now I finally put my foot down after living here for a year and demanded a riding lawnmower because 1. our property comprises four city lots, and 2. I am 45 and I DESERVE A GODDAMN RIDING LAWNMOWER. Which at present sits unused and dead of battery in the shed. Meanwhile, the grass is getting tall and lush. I may have to hire a stout young native with a machete and a good knowlege of the forest before I venture out again. In fact I may do that anyway.
(Yahoo! Last minute update! The yummy biker just this moment got the rider going! They're playing my song!)

Across the back fence from my yard is the community soccer field. Right now it is covered with gulls, overflow crowd attracted by the green rain of food across the street. And in that flurry of white and gray there is one black spot. A crow. A crow with romance on his mind. And the object of his affections is a gull.
This little drama gets played out every year. To me, adult gulls look identical. But for some reason this poor crow singles out a lady gull and follows her and her alone for days, bowing and cawing and strutting and offering her nightcrawlers the size of anacondas. He has even tried to mount her. She just dips her bottom and steps around him. And this is the treatment he receives every year. But hope apparently springs eternal in the corvid breast.
Is it spring where you are? ( Oh, well, for the love of Mike of course it is. But does it show?)