I don’t speak mole, but I feel the need to try…

Digging, I push through dark earth, busily clawing my way forwards, behind me pushing scoops of loosened grub-free soil. If I could, I’d leave no sign of my existence at all, preferring by far to live below ground out of sight, quietly tunnelling and forming my subterranean world, only surfacing to taste fresh air from the midst of my mountainous mole hills.

Existing in your world and mine too, I take no solace or consolation from the sun or stars above as you might, or the clouds or trees for that matter. I live in and for the soil. My focus is close, my ambitions are kerbed, and my territory is limited by nature; I know exactly where I’m at.

You will know where I’ve been though, for whilst I can be inconspicuous, my industrial spoils are heaped in plain sight. My earthen foothills

are filled with granules, grit and grains dug with my own bare hands, clawed from timeless treasure filled ground. As an earth dweller you see, my instinctive purpose is to care for the ground that nurtures us and our kind, to keep my ear to the ground, to excavate, and propagate.

You may if you wish take my crumbly offerings as a gift, and some gardeners do, but that is not my intention. Whilst they may appear untidy to some and best swept away, my soil stacks are piled with purpose and will do all a service if allowed to stay; not least keeping rain from my burrow.

Seeds within the soil will germinate on my slopes and new shoots will grow, their roots forcing their way through the ground, using it for their own purpose, whilst serving ours. Shelter, food and variation will then reign, and Mother Nature shall sing in salutation.

I am not ignorant of your desires I must say, my tiny mind apprehending that with your deafening mowing machines and bitter sprinkles, your choice is to create a self-regarding carpet of greenwashed garden agreeability. My tiny dark eyes see this clearly.

Yet if I were to ask, considering your deep stone filled highways, impenetrable foundations, pipelines and criss-crossing paths, whether you have satisfied your deep-rooted controlling nature, would your response be no? Would confirmation come that you must hold all the in-between soft ground too, dressing it for your visual delight and holding it to the exclusion of those like me?

If that be so, I have few places elsewhere to roam, with fields being cleared of my kind long ago. Where is there to wander if the commons are few and far between. If not your garden, then who else is to feed on your slugs and grubs, who in turn munch your pretty prized plants? 

This inhospitable pen must therefore suffice for me and my ground dwelling family, our digging claws not able to chisel through concrete or tarmac, more is the pity. Survive we must, and with a voice from the dark I’ll remind you that our existence on earth is shared. Your soil is my soil, their soil is our soil, and we all should treasure it.

I will thank you then not to poison or seek to compact and control all ground around, but to welcome me, and in return I’ll show my appreciation with gifts of healthy soil that will cloak and comfort our ground. Let me till the earth for you, be your gardener, and create places where exciting plants will grow, plants that will shelter and forever feed this ground, where new feathered friends will come to entertain you.

Let me appeal to your better nature then, and ask that beyond a neat grassy patch for yourself, you let loose a little more. Please pocket your controlling hands, tread more lightly and adjust your input and expectations. Have trust in me and my bed fellows, and let our creative claws set out a new scenery that in time will be full of vigour and variation. Let us, together, find newer wilder gardening ways.

For and on behalf of, your local mole.

Gary Webb. Gardening Ways.