Springtime in the Carolinas

There’s a dark side to springtime in the Carolinas.
Amidst the explosion of color when things start to bloom – and they all seem to happen at once – you notice something that doesn’t happen in Oklahoma.

The air is thick. I don’t mean that heaviness that happens before a thunderstorm on the plains when you can taste the ozone. I mean that it’s thick, to the point that you feel like a catfish in a muddy river. You can feel the stuff you’re breathing. At times, there’s enough haze that it looks like fog with little snowflakes intermingled.

Unfortunately, you also feel the crud in the air both on the intake and the outgo, since sneezing and coughing seems to worse than during the cold and flu season we just finished.

I’m talking about the pollen explosion, of course. After more than a decade in the Carolinas I’m still not used to it.

It happens all at once, so there’s not a lot of time to get ready. Not that you could do much anyhow.

One day, you notice that the daffodils are all out with their yellow heads bobbing in the breeze. That’s usually the indicator that it’s about to happen.

Then the flowering trees pop, visual warning signs that the unseen invaders are here as well. The worst ones are the trees that don’t have the bright, ornamental flowers but instead spew out these greenish worm looking things that apparently carry more pack for the punch.

It’s then that you see your car is covered with this yellow “ick” that sticks to everything it touches.

Don’t believe me? Brush against a car in a black suit. You’ll be going back to change.

Speaking of cars, they’re all the same color right now. Kind of a grayish yellow, with the original tone peaking through like primer on a bad paint job. If there’s no rain (like it’s been here for the last week or so, since things really opened up) the car washes tend to do a pretty good business just because some people can’t take it any more and have to get the stuff off the car.

Others of us, used to dusty vehicles, simply refill the windshield washer fluid. Scraping your windows of pollen is about as common as scraping the frost off was a few weeks ago.

Eventually, your car’s windshield washer won’t be able to manage the accumulation and you have to use that squeegee thing at the filling station to take off the gunk that cakes up.

The other thing you learn quickly is not to succumb to the urge to open the windows in the house, no matter how nice the day is outside. If you do, you are instantly inundated with all that stuff inside your carefully filtered environment and taking everything down to dust will make you truly appreciate the aspects of air conditioning other than just cooling the living room.

Over the years I’ve learned to adapt. It’s necessary, because there are things in the air in the Carolinas that my Oklahoma sensitivities had never encountered before and still aren’t happy about.

Paying someone to mow the lawn is cheaper than the drugs that will be necessary after I do it myself, and without the side effects of being a balloon-head for days on end.

Mom’s rule about “no air conditioning before May 1” is completely out There are days in March that may have the heat on in the morning and the air conditioning on in the afternoon.

Carry your suit jacket with you until you arrive at your destination, then put it on. Those little pads of cloths to pickup lint are also helpful, although it may take 3 or 4 if you have to park at the far end of the lot.

Give in and take drugs. It’s one of the few times that moving to an altered state really will make your problems go away and things get better.

The pollen is a pain, but then again, as you look out from your atmospherically controlled environment, springtime really is beautiful.

Here’s a few shots from our yard this year.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/45676962@N05/tags/springyard/show/