Misery

Thursday, 6:02 am

Aug

25

2005

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?!