Neither steel nor poison nor cherry blossoms

[constance]

Hello.

I arrived back home from a gratifying baby-cuddling trip -- I will spare those of you who have no interest in cuddling babies the details, but it was most assuredly gratifying -- to find the entire state hidden under a gigantic dustbowl of a pollen blanket. I have never seen such billowing clouds of pollen just right out in the open air before. I sit under a tree at lunch and read, and I can actually see it in the still air, just floating casually around. My city looks as though it's participating in a city-wide car-washing strike (hooray for the allergen union!). It gets on everything. It collects on my black pants and pools on my floors and scratches at the back of my throat and probably turns my snot green (but of course I wouldn't know about that).

And because it is the twenty-first century, I just take my daily doses of all those little chemicals which allow me to breathe this stuff without expiring, and I breathe without expiring and only sneeze and cough and sleep a little more, and I even make plans to garden on the weekend because I found some super-cheap azaleas and daisies and fashionable or no I have always wanted enormous banks of these flowers in my front garden and my god! I have a house! And unlike my plans to build houses from the ground up and eat nothing but fritos and cream cheese frosting for the rest of my life, and even given my talent for seeing plants to their most violent of all possible deaths, this is an entirely practicable plan, I think. And so if you happen to be driving down a certain street in Middle Georgia on Saturday and see a ponytailed redhead with a shovel looking completely confounded and outclassed by a bunch of one-gallon pots of innocent shrubbery, well, that's me. And. If you should see me, and you have some helpful advice to offer, feel free to offer it. I'm not proud.

Comments

[octoberstory.livejournal.com]

*dies, wheezing*

I'm glad Operation:CuddleGracie was successfully executed. ♥

We have to talk Auntishness and visits and BSG!:O

[imkalena.livejournal.com]

AHAHA POLLEN MESSAGES! THERE ARE MESSAGES IN THE POLLEN!

Don't spend too much money on pots of daisies if they're Shasta. The things spread like wildfire and reseed like crazy. They're so amazing they have infiltrated my entire back lawn -- they will crowd out grass. Simply leave them some room and scatter a couple packets of seed around them. You'll have more daisies than you know what to do with next year. :)

[amelia-eve.livejournal.com]

Daisies and azaleas sound very cheerful. I am just so sick of impatiens everywhere. Bleah. One very satisfying annual to put in is cosmos. It's very gratifying to start something from a tiny seed that grows taller than your head in just a few months.

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

I guess there'll be a locked post for those of us who adore baby-cuddling stories told in loving detail, right?

That pollen is unbelievable. I've never seen anything like it. Does it come from everywhere, or is there one particular THING that's churning it out like that? We get sycamore pollen that sometimes gets thick, but not thick like what you've got. That's just unreal.

I'm hopping the next Greyhound with my post hole digger (let's hope buses aren't as picky about carry-on luggage as airplanes are) to help you with the gardening. Are you going to throw some seeds out, too? My sister's been casually sowing handfuls here and there while she's been out toddling around with her 2-year-old, and already has pumpkin seedlings, tomato seedlings, baby cosmos and a giant nest of nasturtiums. Your house would look lovely blanketed in vigorous annuals! I love daisies and especially azaleas; our house gets too much sun for azaleas, but I admire them on shadier properties. I wish I hadn't spilled all my spitting cucumber seeds behind the stove, or I'd send you some.