It happens about the same time every year. Pollen season. It tends to hit right around our anniversary, that is the Spring Equinox.
It's the time of year when the oak trees, having joined the eternal quest for procreation and bloomed their woody little hearts out, begin to drop their flowers along with the last of the old leaves. For about four weeks, the flowers will fall from the trees, hitting the ground with tiny puffs of yellow-brown pollen. The effect is much like watching a heavy, ungraceful snowfall. A bane of all who are allergic to it.
March breezes, in ever changing patterns, push and pile these flowers into drifts on the driveway, filling the cracks in the sidewalk and create mounds on the roadside where passing cars grind them into a fine power. Our neighbors, in a vane attempt to keep up with depositional deluge, sweep their driveways weekly, and sometimes daily, to rid themselves of the unsightly clumps.
At least once a year, you'll find me out there as well. Usually in the week between visits by the lawn guys, I'm out there myself with broom and blower in hand. And a shovel. Because believe it or not the best way to bag this stuff up is to shovel it into a trash can. The trick is not to get a face full in the process.
Unlike its northern namesake, Florida's dirty snow puffs out clouds of allergens each time it's disturbed. And it doesn't melt. It isn't until we get a good hard, prolonged rainfall that the season begins to abate. Some years that can be weeks after the blooms have fallen. Without the rain the pollen is simply resuspended in the air with each passing front and windy day.
I can't say which is better and which is worse. A heavy snowfall in New England will drive people inside where they can be comfortable and warm. It's not so different down here, where people often end up retreating from the dirty snow that falls in the spring. The difference is it's already warm outside down here, and the comfort they seek is not from chilly weather, but an attempt to get away from the wayward accumulations of this rite of spring.
