Pollen

      The oak trees are pollinating.  I hate this time of year.  On a windy day, it rains strands of pollen.  The gutters and downspouts are jammed with it.  It's wrapped around the car's windshield wipers.  It's all over the yard.  The dog comes in with the stuff tangled in her curly, poodle hair.  If I don't pick it out of her fur, it is spread throughout the house.  I'll spend the next month climbing up to clear the gutters before each rain storm and raking the patio after a windy day - all the while wearing a mask.

      

     Mike's eyes are itchy and red.  It's my job to dose him with eye drops because (in his words) he has a problem administering eye drops to himself.  The process of getting drops into Mike's eyes resembles a scene from "A Clockwork Orange."
     It should all be over by June.  We'll enjoy the shade of the stately oak trees this summer.  This fall the trees will drop leaves and acorns all over the place.  The squirrels will bury all the acorns that I fail to rake out of the yard.   The whole pollen cycle will repeat next spring.  I'll also be digging up all the baby oaks that have sprouted from the squirrel's planting efforts.  Is anybody besides me getting too old for this?