The Lawnmower, the Mole, and the Garden
A quick update—and a curious tale about a mole and my neighbor.
Hello, Hallo, and Konnichiwa!
I hope you’ve all had a wonderful start to the new year and that the stress of daily life hasn’t caught up with you too quickly.
I’m currently working on the layout for my new book and hoping for a release by the end of February—though we’ll see how things unfold.
In the meantime, I’d like to share a little story that happened to me a few weeks ago. It’s a perfect example of how life has its own way of balancing things.
The Lawnmower, the Mole, and the Garden
My neighbor’s robotic lawnmower is tireless, buzzing across their lawn day and night. Its blades, designed to keep the grass perfectly trimmed, show no mercy to anything in their path. Flowers that dared to bloom too close to the ground are shredded. Insects lose their habitats. Butterflies, drawn to what little color is left, are disturbed. Even hedgehogs, quietly wandering at night, risk serious injury from this machine of endless precision.
The garden feels lifeless. It’s orderly, yes—but empty, like a picture where everything alive has been erased.
One evening, as I looked out my window, I noticed a few large mounds scattered across my neighbor’s lawn. At first, I thought they were piles of leaves gathered by the wind. But something about them seemed odd.
When a storm swept through later that night, I expected them to disappear. Instead, the next morning, there were even more mounds—larger and more numerous.
That’s when I realized: they were molehills.
I laughed, unable to help myself. The irony was too perfect. This lawn, always guarded by a robotic mower, had now been overtaken by a creature that operates far below the surface.
The mole had tunneled through half the yard, leaving it dotted with hills that made the lawnmower completely useless. It was as if nature itself had decided to push back, sending in one of its smallest agents to reclaim the space.
There’s a poetic justice in it, isn’t there? But I don’t believe in karma—not in the sense of “do good, and good will follow,” or “do bad, and bad will find you.”
Life is far more intricate than that, an endless web of causes and effects that stretch beyond our understanding. We see the results, but the beginnings and endings are hidden from us.
Still, I couldn’t shake the wonder. Why here, in this garden? Why this neighbor, whose lawnmower roamed so persistently?
None of the other gardens had molehills, and this house wasn’t even the first in the row. A coincidence, perhaps. Or simply one of those moments when nature reminds us of its quiet, persistent power.