Pine Pollen Time

[crookedtune]

Gagging......

[dwest]

I have a green truck right now, normally it's blue. My wife's car is bright yellow and my silver Honda is just sorta yucky. Had a couple of pollen devils yesterday, like a dust devil only pollen. It could be worse but luckily the tornado took a large number of the pines when it came through.

[Denny]

haven't breathed fer weeks

lovely season, innit

[missy]

yep - now it's the trees....

then it will be the grass......

then in August, it'll be ragweed - my worst offender......


I think I breathe through my nose about 10 days out of the year.

[emmline]

Good to know. My ear has been perfectly unclogged thus far this Spring. So, I can rule that one out as my prime allergen nemesis.
Ragweed, otoh, is a prime suspect.

[dwest]

The neat thing about ragweed is the inroads it's making into Europe. It's been fascinating to watch the spread of allergies developing amongst a whole new group of unsuspecting susceptible societies. Global warming is only hastening it's domination of the world.

[HDSarah]

Yeah, global warming keeps shortening the ski season and lengthening the allergy season. Blah. I just tell people "I'm allergic to summer" -- I know chickweed causes me to wake up with my eyes glued shut, and pollens irritate my sinuses, but I'm not sure exactly what all bothers me. Now on C&F I learn to fear the northward march of the pines, too. By the time they'd arrive here, though, the boreal forest may have dried up and burned down, and the landscape reverted to a dry grassland. A longer growing season demands more water, and unless precip goes up with warming (currently it seems to be going down), we're in trouble.

Nearly 30 years ago, when I first moved to interior Alaska, the cross-country ski season started the beginning of October and ran through April, and sometimes even early May. The best skiing of the year was in April -- bright, sunny, warm. Lately we get so little snow and it starts warming so early that April skiing is just a memory. It's only April 5 now and this year's miniscule snow cover is already almost gone. I've had to start wiping the dogs' feet in the afternoons already, and sweeping the tracked-in dirt (from both dogs and humans) every day. Winter is such a clean season -- I miss it already.

[chas]

Not too many pine trees around here, but the oaks and maples are getting to me.

[Lambchop]

Pine isn't a problem here right now.

We have extremely high levels of oak, bayberry, and pellitory (a small flowering weed).

Gah! Several people at work (a hospital) this week inquired as to whether I had pneumonia.

What's blooming in your area? Pollen.com

[chas]

Evidently yesterday set a record for pollen count in the DC area for April. It was four thousand something. That's something that's usually reserved for grasses in the summer.

[mutepointe]

Could someone please explain the evolution benefits of allergies? I forget.

[SteveShaw]

But pine pollen is so beautiful under the microscope. Two little air sacs per grain, like angels' wings, allowing the propagule to fly so far on so slight a breeze. Pity the poor pine tree when the wind is all wrong and billions of grains are wasted in the ocean. And pine trees were here a long time before we invaded their world!

[HDSarah]

What's blooming in your area? Pollen.com

That would have been a fun site, but my state isn't on the map. Of course, it isn't pollen season here yet, but I bet they don't add us in a few weeks when pollen starts to fly. I'm sure Hawaii has pollen year-round, and they don't rate being on the map either. Pooh.

[Lambchop]

What's blooming in your area? Pollen.com

That would have been a fun site, but my state isn't on the map. Of course, it isn't pollen season here yet, but I bet they don't add us in a few weeks when pollen starts to fly. I'm sure Hawaii has pollen year-round, and they don't rate being on the map either. Pooh.

Oops!

[HDSarah]

Oops!

Don't worry; I don't blame YOU.

This is actually a fairly common occurrence. What I hate is when a mail order place refers to shipping rates "within the continental U.S." and then excludes Alaska. I try to teach them the word "contiguous" but it doesn't seem to help. I blame it on all those maps that show a shrunken Alaska, detached and placed as an island off of California. No wonder so many Americans seem not to know that Alaska is on the same continent as what we call "the Lower 48."