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.

Springing to life

Even being the cold weather, dark clouds, rainstorm addict that I am, I admit to having a special appreciation for this time of year. Spring, especially after a winter that brought such impressive rains to the Southland, often takes my breath away, quite literally. Of course, I’m partially referring to the curtain of yellow-green pollen that blows across our driveway (especially if we’ve just washed a car) from the highly productive pine trees in our neighbor’s yard and engages my life-long battle with asthma like a cheap cigar in a small elevator.

However, this time of year I also regularly catch myself holding my breath while watching one of many small springtime miracles unfold before my eyes in honor of the new season.

For example, we have two sycamore trees – a towering, older one in our front yard and a smaller, younger one in back of our house. Not two weeks ago, I looked at the bare branches and thought to myself that it wouldn’t be long until the trees would be covered in green, leafy foliage that would provide cooling shade to our house and yards.

Sure enough, both of these sycamores are now dotted with green measles of small leafy shoots emerging from all across their gray bark skin. The new leaves are growing so fast, I swear sometimes if I stare long enough at the same branch, I can see the leaves grow as I watch. It’s amazing to behold.

A few years ago, about this same time of year and while looking out our living room window, we noticed a couple of small birds (maybe sparrows, or finches?) that were flying from the bare branches of the older sycamore in our front yard to the eaves along the front of our house. They had pine needles, twigs and other organic debris in their mouths and were obviously trying to find a place to build a nest – flying back and forth along the eaves without much success.

The next thing I knew, our middle son (being an exceptionally resourceful craftsman) disappeared into our garage. When he reappeared a short while later, he carried with him a small wooden shelf that he proceeded to attach with brass brackets high up in the eaves above our front porch – creating a simple, safe perch for the little birds to build their nest and keep away from neighborhood cats, raccoons, and other predators. Soon after our son climbed down off the ladder and come back into the house, the birds flew directly to his newly installed avian apartment to begin setting up housekeeping.

Every Spring now, as our trees burst forth with new life, we watch the building of yet a new nest – and eventually – witness a mother bird protecting her tiny eggs while the father bird flies back and forth providing bits of food and – from his nearby perch on the sycamore – protection for his family. Like I said, it takes my breath away.  

Then again, this sort of internal, deeply imbedded programming so readily found throughout all of creation is – to me at least – just another reminder that we do not inhabit a world of randomness and chaos. Rather, we live in a deliberately designed and painstakingly created place of beauty and purpose. 

Whether it’s the vividly colorful flower that pushes up through the last monochromatic snows of winter, or the sudden explosion of bugs just in time to feed all of those new upturned baby bird mouths emerging from nests all across the land – every once in a while, it registers somewhere inside this thick head of mine, that this season of growth and renewal and of life itself is no accident.

No matter how the harsh realities of everyday life may darken my optimism, no matter what injustice, pain and suffering may yet exist throughout a fallen world, Spring – more specifically, Easter – reminds me to believe in a bigger, better, grander plan. And I do. I’ll see you ‘round town.

[Author’s note: An edited version of this essay was originally published in the April 1, 2010 edition of the CV Weekly Newspaper.]

This version © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

The Porta-Potties Are In Bloom

I know Spring has arrived in the foothills of Southern California not because of the clouds of yellow pollen that waft through the air with even the slightest breeze (or leaf blower), turning our cars a bright, powdery shade of saffron. It’s also not because our family pops antihistamines like Tic-Tacs during these days.

No. I know when Spring has sprung because of all the Porta-Potties popping up on neighborhood lawns from Sunland in the west to Flintridge in the east of our quaint suburban valley. Our all-too-brief rainy season is essentially over, with months of bone dry, hot-as-a-muffler weather just around the corner. Mortgage meltdown and shrinking home equity lines of credit be damned, homeowners everywhere seem to have pulled the trigger on long-awaited remodeling projects.

So, up go the Porta-Potties set far out by the curb. In come dumpsters to driveways like ships to berth. And out come the sledgehammers, crowbars, saws and enough power tools to dim the lights two counties over.

Homeowners who wait until Spring to begin remodeling are smart. Unlike my wife and me, who foolishly began our first, and last, major home remodel at the beginning of winter many years ago – a winter of near record rainfall. And cold. And wind. And what were we thinking?  

Within days after our contractor and his horde of hairy-handed helpers arrived, half of the roof and at least a third of the exterior walls in our house were gone, leaving most living areas exposed to the ravages of winter.

Our Christmas tree that year was on wheels. We had no undemolished corner of a living room in which to put a traditional tree, so we bought a small, live tree in a planter and sat it on a 4-wheeled moving dolly. Then, whenever rainwater breached a new location in the ceiling and threatened to short out the decorative lights festively strung on our tannenbaum like spiral slices on a holiday ham, we would simply roll the entire yuletide display to a less-damp location elsewhere in the house.

I spent the better part of the next four months waking up during the night to the sound of howling wind, flapping tarps and flowing water. I would jump out of bed, dash outside with a flashlight in one hand and hammer in the other, and climb up onto the remains of our roof to frantically refasten blue tarps that had become unfurled sails.

I have pictures of our then school-aged son and daughter, standing on a rough plywood subfloor in what would months later be a beautiful new kitchen. They are bundled up in their bathrobes, with a “hurry up and take the picture, Dad, it’s freezing in here” look on their faces. Behind them where a wall should be, is more half-inch plywood, temporarily nailed onto 2x4 studs – a laughable (yet in no way funny) imitation of walls to keep at least some of the wind and rain out of the “kitchen” until real stucco and wallboard versions could be installed. In the picture, rainwater can be seen pouring through the gaps in the plywood.

How we made it through that period without a visit from Child Protective Services, I’ll never know. Seeing the many blue and white plastic porta-potties dotting the streets around town today, reminds me all over again of that unforgettable time when the porta-potty in our front yard was the only place to go to get out of the rain. Ah, good times.

But then, really – aren’t Porta-Potties all about good times? I mean, what other industry (other than hair salons) has companies with so many clever names? You just gotta love “Happy Can Portable Toilets,” or “Best Seat In The House,” “Johnny On The Spot,” “Royal Throne,” “Gotta Go Potties,” “UrinBiz,” “Willy Make It?,” “Ameri-Can,” “Tanks Alot,” and my personal favorite, “Doodie Calls.” I’m not making these up, folks. Then again, if your business is Porta Potties (What did you do today, Daddy?), you find your fun where you can.

With that thought, I’ll officially welcome the new season by taking yet another walk through the neighborhood, where the scent of Spring – and other things – is in the air.

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: This post is an edited version of a column first published in the April 3, 2008 edition of the Crescenta Valley Sun newspaper.)

This version © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.