Don’t care for our potholes? Grab a shovel or bouquet – you decide.

First, the shovel. Mohave County in the early 1980s was poor, with few people and little tax revenue. But it’s the nation’s fifth-largest county, bigger than 28 states combined.

Roads and highways snake everywhere across that northwestern Arizona slab of Mojave Desert.

(Yes, the county name is misspelled, just as my old Sahuaro High School in Tucson misspells the cactus name, saguaro. But I digress.)

This wind-swept desert freezes and burns; the Colorado River stretch between Bullhead City, Ariz., and Laughlin, Nev., is one of the few places where an inner-tuber can get sunburned and frostbit at the same time.

So imagine how the roads buckle and the potholes form. (You don’t have to imagine. You live in Colorado Springs.)

Then-county Commissioner Jim Schultz got sick of the whining and trucked a ton or two of premixed asphalt to the county seat of Kingman. He dumped it behind the courthouse and told residents to grab a shovel and “Adopt a Pothole.” They did, and the story I wrote for the Kingman Daily Miner swept the nation. Potholes, it seems, are big news everywhere.

Now flowers are popping up in the Michigan potholes of Hamtramck. (Talk about weird spellings … ) So reports Joseph Rose of The Oregonian.

Paige Breithart said she and a friend planted 40 or 50 flowers in potholes across the city, the aptly named Rose reports.

Hamtramck isn’t alone. Flowers are sprouting in potholes from Montreal to New York, where a Schenectady woman is plopping pansies in her hometown potholes.

Chicago artist Jim Bachor has resorted to creating intricate flower mosaics, resulting in potholes so lovely that no one likely will touch them.

Here in Colorado Springs, Mayor John Suthers has declared war on potholes, but he knows they’re only the surface symptom of our disintegrating streets.

You don’t need a survey to tell you we’re all sick of dodging those ubiquitous pits. So what will it be, COS? Asphalt? Blossoms? Or a “yes” vote in November for money to fix them? Our newly minted mayor recommends the latter.