Spring Has Sprung!

Spring has sprung

I don’t care what the actual dates on the calendar say, I’m telling you Spring is well and truly here. I know this because I woke up a week ago with an itchy throat, red and itchy eyes, a runny nose and uncontrollable sneezing, and put it down to being the aftermath of the EKKA. And then it got worse, and I realised that it wasn’t a cold, it was much, much worse indeed.

For anyone who has never suffered from hay fever, let me tell you that it’s the serious pits! It’s a solid month (at least!) of sneezing and red and itchy eyes and generally frustrating cold-like symptoms. It’s waking up at night and not being able to get any relief at all from the symptoms until you pop another anti-histamine. (Yay for anti-histamines!)

My symptoms worsened after I had children. (There’s something you don’t sign up for when you have kids!) I live on a property loaded with Cyprus Pine. We have one particularly large pine tree out the front of our house, directly in front of my bedroom window. Every year at this time I reach a psychological breaking point and threaten to get out a chainsaw and cut the tree down  - like any completely rational person would; it’s usually sometime between large gusts of pollen flying through the air in August, to the final pollen drops in September. The crazy woman in me can think of nothing better than dropping that pollen-dropping tree to the ground and sawing it into a million pieces. And then The Farmer reminds me that in order to improve my hay fever I’m going to have to get out and cover 20000 acres and remove all the other pine trees as well. It’s a lose-lose situation. Also (in related news), Cyprus Pine is too fast burning to be decent fire wood anyway…

 

My Kryptonite!

 

Thankfully I know I’m not alone. Mr B next door suffers hay fever too. Harvesting wheat in a Cyprus Pine environment isn’t his cup of tea either for a few weeks each year.

So whilst there may not be any new shoots on our winter-stripped trees at the moment, I know that they aren’t far away at all. The Cyprus Pines never lie, and I find that I’m already looking forward to October. Bring on the end of all the pollen.