In the Zen-like space of lawn maintenance, that is, on the 20th circuit around the yard, I felt my rage against the moles that colonize my root space begin to subside. How do I get rid of these things?

My family lives in a modest 50s style ranch house with a great yard. We have a semi-finished bathroom in the basement where we take our showers, and where chipping paint in the shower stall is getting out of hand. I'm always embarrassed about that, and about the fact that we have so little room to put up guests. My kids' rooms are small--but there's a bedroom for each in this little house because we chose to have just two kids. Out in the yard, weary of the long afternoons mowing, and the mower exhaust we pour into the atmosphere, we've let two big sections go native--our environmental plots. This too embarrasses me when some friends are over. It looks a little leggy in late summer. There's a woodlot, now, (messy looking by the end of winter), for the woodstove we put in, which keeps the heating bills down. We bought the hybrid and it is pretty amazing to fill the tank up and go and go and go. It's still shiny and new but we've clocked 9000 miles in 4 months.

My point is this--why do I get embarrassed about the small house, the crappy bathroom and the parts of the yard gone to seed? This is crazy! We made these choices deliberately, to have less of an impact and in our own way, we're achieving that. I have got to lighten up.