Lifestyles

Is That Smoke or Pollen

Bramblings
By Becky Nelson
I had just come into the house for a glass of water when I glanced at my husband, who was tractor-working in a field in front of the house. Beyond, I saw what I thought was smoke…a fire at the neighbor’s? After all, I’ve always heard where there’s smoke there’s fire. All sorts of scenarios run through your head when you think something awful might be happening. It sometimes takes a matter of seconds to recalculate the information your eyes take in.

What I was actually seeing was a burst of pollen from the pine trees at the base of another of our fields. It didn’t take very long before the burst headed east on the wind and the entire valley beyond filled with the greenish-yellow pollen like wood smoke haze sometimes hangs on frosty mornings and fog hangs over the Sugar River at the base of Mount Tug in our view.

Soon, the entire landscape was covered in pollen. It coated cars, it coated window sills, equipment, all the vegetation in sight. I had the windows open, and it soon covered everything in my house to my dismay. It was doing its job, for sure. The complex processes inside these trees never cease to amaze me. Pine are not the only species releasing pollen now, and birch, poplar, oak and beech are all competing for air space to send their pollen spores on the way to be received by another similar tree in the neighborhood to use the same process that we in the animal world use with sperm and egg to make human babies to make a new seed with the potential to make a new tree.

For anyone who suffers allergies, this is not a favorite time of year. Working outside most every day, our nostrils pick up this flying pollen on a frequent basis and are in a constant sniffle for months. Some pollens are too heavy to carry on the wind and rely on bees, hummingbirds, insects and sometimes mammals to carry the pollen to neighboring plants. It is not uncommon to see bees laden with pollen going from blossom to blossom on the apples, blueberries and raspberries at the farm, which is also a source of wonder to me. The system of creating life is so complex that just one little glitch in the system can make for disaster. But back to pollen…soon after the trees release their pollen, the grasses and other vegetation will do the same and the sniffles continue. The miracle of new life also continues.

Putting seeds in the ground as we are currently always fills me with a sense of wonder. The potential in that teeny-tiny seed is an awesome gift. We are beginning to see does with fawns, robins with chicks, chipmunks with young ones. And every time a human is born there is the potential for change, for new ideas, exciting directions. Times are bleak, the economy is hard, bad things are happening, but we need to stop for a moment and take stock of what our eyes are taking in. Is it a firestorm of bad or a pollen burst of potential?

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