Feeling Green

You know those beautiful nature pictures in which everything looks so vibrant at first glance? Then you get to looking at things closer and you realize that not only are the trees green, but so is the sky and the water and anything else that might be present in the picture. I first learned about such filters when my dad helped me with my photography endeavors for the regional ACE convention.

Currently everything in the Chattanooga area is covered with a similar green haze, just as if you had green contact lenses or a green camera filter. You wake up in the morning, and your car is covered with a green layer of tree pollen. So is the road around my apartment. The pollen is so thick in the air that you can almost chew on it. Fortunately I don't suffer from allergies.

Yes, spring has arrived here and it is wonderful. I recently put flower pots back outside. This weekend I'll be putting the garden in. I probably should have done it last week with as warm as its been this week.

I don't recall pollen like this when I was a kid in Ontario. I guess the birch and poplar trees were too intent on getting on with energy storage before the next deep freeze that they invested their energy in leaves more than in flowers and pollen. Instead of the pollen turning everything green, we had the wonderful army worm. Millions of those little buggers would appear, munching their way through everything green in sight. They created a dilemma for people like my youngest sister who were too squeamish to walk on a living critter. You could actually hear the sound of them popping as you drove down the road.

I guess given the choice between pollen and worms, I'd take pollen.