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Misery
Here we have the Giant Ragweed plant and the cruel little pollen that it produces. Look at all those barbs. I can feel each and every one of them sticking themselves deeper and deeper into my nose, my eyes, my throat....
Ragweed season has arrived right on schedule and it will last until the first killing frost.
One ragweed plant can produce over a billion grains of pollen each season. Multiply that by dozens of plants scattered across the hill behind the house and I must have hundreds of thousands of those little barbed things clinging to every available inch of me. And they make me sneeze and itch and water. A lot. All the time.
I keep forgetting, every year, what fun early autumn is. After this blistering humid summer, I’ve looked forward to the clear cool days of autumn, but first I have to survive ragweed season. Mostly in a bleary antihistamine fog. Why, oh why, can’t human beings and nature just get along?!
I have been trying to figure out for a week what was making me sneeze. As soon as I saw that picture, which looks just like the weeds around my front steps, I had my answer.
Thanks, I think.
You have my sympathies, Brian. And where there are a couple, there are probably hundreds more in the near vicinity. They are, afterall, weeds and nothing thrives like weeds.
It’s funny, when I lived in Toronto, I used to suffer horribly, .... but since moving back home to NS, ... I don’t think I’ve been bothered at all. And yes, we have ragweed, lots of it, .... Go figure. Probably something else ... like smog, contributed when in T.O. :0
Different regions seem to bring out different reactions. Back in NY state, spring was even worse than autumn. Here I’m not allergic to anything in the spring. And it wasn’t until six or so years ago that I started having ragweed allergies here. Must not have been much ragweed in the area. I sure was miserable with it in NY state every autumn, though. And spectacularly in Ohio one year.