Not-So-Mellow Yellow

No matter what the calendar says, Spring has arrived in my Foothills neighborhood. It’s in the air. It’s covering my driveway. It has blanketed our cars until it’s hard to tell what color they are. It’s thick on the plants in our garden and has wafted in and covered all of the tools on my workbench in the garage. There was even a thin layer of it on my computer monitor and keyboard as I sat down to write this morning. But worse part is that it’s in my eyes and nose and lungs.

For whatever reason – lack of rainfall, this year’s roller coaster “winter” temperatures, George Bush, the sequester, who knows – the air all across my slice of Southern California known as the Crescenta Valley is thick with yellow pollen. I might be hyper sensitive, but the pollen problem seems particularly severe in my neck of the woods. Before my wife drove off to work this morning, for example, I had to hose off her car just so she could see out the windows. There was a thick stream of yellow yuck running down our driveway as I squeegeed her windows clean. Before I was even finished, however, I noticed that fresh yellow powder had already fallen on the hood of her car. “Quick, drive away now,” I pleaded to her through the driver’s side window as she sat inside with the engine idling, “or you won’t be able to see out again!” She blew a kiss, wished me luck and floored it, roaring down the driveway, leaving me in a swirling cloud of allergens. With the hose in one hand and squeegee in the other, I stood and watched as she vanished into the yellow haze. Wishing I had had the forethought to put on a filter mask before venturing out into the murky morning, I looked around in wonder at my own private hay fever hell.

There are several towering, old-growth pine trees either on or leaning over our property whose branches right now are heavily laden with bright yellow, grenade-like pollen pods. They hang high above the ground, just waiting for the slightest breeze to nudge them loose and send them plummeting to the ground.

When these pods burst, they release a puff of pollen that you can actually see disperse into the air and get carried away. But the real excitement happens when all of this yellow menace meets the business end of a gas-powered leaf blower. As convenient as these tornado generators with shoulder straps might be, when I hear the unmistakable sound of a two-stroke engine revving up nearby, I can’t close all of our windows and doors fast enough. I also instinctively grab the keys so I can roll up any open car window, then have to quickly gather up any laundry hanging near the washer and dryer in our garage lest it become dusted with a yellow patina of powder. Fun times, indeed.

Just now, looking out at our front yard from my second story office balcony, it looks as if we’ve been repeatedly strafed by a crop duster with powdered lemon Jello® in its tanks. Everything in sight is blanketed with a thick yellow film. With each puff of a breeze, more pollen is released from nearby trees and drifts slowly through the air. I can actually see well-defined tire tracks on the driveway where we’ve driven our cars the past few days. Talk about yellow snow!

In researching pollen for this column, I learned that the lifespan of a pollen grain (or at least its usefulness in fertilizing or “pollenating” another plant that it happens to land on) can be as little as two hours. On the other hand, its ability to produce the allergic reaction not-so-affectionately known as hay fever can last indefinitely. Well, isn’t that just ducky.

Looks like it’s going to be one long, sneezy, drippy Spring. I’ll see you ‘round town.

Welcome

Welcome to the new My Thoughts, Exactly blog. Having written well over 150 weekly columns – first for the now-defunct Crescenta Valley Sun newspaper (owned and killed by its dysfunctional parent, the LA Times, which also owns the Glendale Newspress, and the ... oh, never mind), and then the CV Weekly newspaper (published with great pride and at equally impressive expense by Robin Goldsworthy, the former editor of the former CV Sun paper), I knew there had to be a way to keep these 650-word (give or take a few) musings “out there” for anyone who wanted to read them at any given time.

After all, I realize that not everyone has a CV Weekly paper thrown onto their driveway every Thursday morning. Heck, even I don’t have a CV Weekly paper thrown on my driveway every Thursday morning and I’ve written a column in the dang thing since its debut edition. To be fair, I live on what’s called a “flag lot” with four other homes that share a common driveway. One other neighbor actually has a paid subscription to the paper and the dear woman is well into her eighties. For some reason, the folks who deliver the paper in the wee hours of Thursday mornings are unable to throw more than one paper onto a single driveway – no matter how many times they’ve been admonished to do so by the powers-that-be at the worldwide headquarters of the publishing empire affectionately (and legally) known as the Crescenta Valley Weekly.

Anyway, back to my neighbor. I’ve watched her take the better part of a morning to shuffle from her front porch down the end of the driveway to retrieve her paper. So believe me, I’m not going to be the chuckle head who takes the lone copy of the CV Weekly that is delivered to our collective driveway. Beside which, the paper is available free of charge at many retail locations throughout our fair Foothills community – places such as Starbucks, Walgreen’s, all of our supermarkets and many other places. In other words, my neighbor’s paper is safe.

Where was I? Oh, right. I’ve long wanted an online place to archive the My Thoughts, Exactly columns that is easily accessible, searchable by key words, and managed by yours truly rather than a pimply-faced, I.T. mole web-master at the newspaper’s home office. (Not that I’ve ever even seen the aforementioned I.T. nerd, er … person at the paper – but you know what I’m getting at.)

And so … in addition to posting my latest column on the Friday after it has been published in the CV Weekly (if you want to read it the same day it’s published, you’ll just have to subscribe to the paper), I also have every intention to post lengthier versions of my columns as time and thinking permit – along with unpublished (at least in newsprint) columns or posts that may not be appropriate for my regular weekly column in the newspaper. I’ll also throw down the occasional odd or random thoughts and comments as they occur to me and as I think someone may be interested in reading.

Stay tuned. Check this space often. Tell a friend. Please.