When it comes to blogging, I can’t help but think of the expression “feast or famine.” Often, the blog topics come effortlessly. But occasionally, ideas are as rare as a pollen-free car on a Georgia Spring day. Speaking of pollen, we have all kinds here in the south. Right now, a fine white talcum-powdery kind of pollen is in fashion. Later on in the spring, yellow pollen will fall from pine tree branches like winter snow, and I’m not exaggerating in the slightest. Georgia, I would argue, is pollen central. On some days in Georgia, the sky actually turns yellow when a strong breeze stirs things up a bit.

Bees love pollen and need the yellowish powder to transform their bee larvae into adult worker bees. Farmers, in turn, hire beekeepers to bring colonies of their bees to help fertilize farm crops. Health food stores sell pollen as a nutritional supplement. Nearly every plant makes pollen and, without it, plants would be unable to reproduce and perpetuate. Most people understand that pollen is very beneficial and necessary. The problem is that many of us humans are allergic to it in varying degrees.

Under a microscope it’s easy to see why pollen causes trouble. Pollen spores are tiny and, consequently, easily enter your sinuses and your lungs, as well as every other nook and cranny in your body. They look like World War two naval mines with Velcro grabbers that hook onto anything that might transport the spores to a willing host. In a sense, we, and every other living thing, serve as delivery devices for the plant world. Using the aforementioned Velcro grabbers, pollen latches onto us as we wander about until we accidently rub up against, or sneeze on, a receptive host plant.

Before we can perform our “duties” as pollen vectors, lots of bad things often happen…but only to those, like me, who are allergic. Fortunately, in this best of all possible worlds, nature has provided us with an opportunity to exact our “pound of flesh.” It’s called vegetarianism. What better revenge could there be than eating the offspring of your enemy? I’ve been doing it, guilt free, for more than 20 years.

A Pollen Haiku

Yellowish you are
Delightful you are so NOT!
I hate you a bunch

Posted in JP
No Comments Yet Posted by admin