Dear Trees,
You are amazing. You oxygenate the planet, your provide a home for so many creatures, shade for picnics, delicious syrup, nuts, seeds, championship-worthy conkers, and a place for squirrels to escape the wrath of our collie.
And yet.
The pollen.
I get it, I get it - you can’t run about the countryside on ‘dates’ with other trees, but must you fling the pollen about so broadly?? And for so long?! Can’t you more effectively use some of the creatures you harbor to do your pollen distribution? Bees? Birds? Are you too shy to ask? You don’t look shy. Maybe let some of them be your wingman? Many of them have actual wings.
It’s just that quite a bit of your pollen misses all the other trees, and lands on our patio furniture, dogs, head. My glass of wine the other night, had a film of pollen. (Drink it faster I hear you say! Yes, well you might have a point there.)
Most of my sentences right now are more sneezes than words.
It really limits my effectiveness when yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off my lawn.1
I hear that climate change is making you produce more pollen. For me this is reason enough to address climate change right here and now. (And why yellow pollen by the way? You know it stains, right?)
But even without climate change, you were already, it seems to me, getting a bit carried away with the ‘spring exuberance’ thing.
I’d like to suggest you behave with a bit more decorum - as befits your majestic station in life. But I suspect you will ignore me (as usual) and go about your business ‘oxygenating the planet’, as you do.
Well, I suppose I can at least blame the usual dust in the house on your spring activity at this time of the year. So that’s one thing. And your leafing-out shields us from the neighbor’s security light2 for a while, which we really, really appreciate3. And I did just put some shade-loving plants under your leafy branches this weekend. And you do provide the raw materials that eventually gets turned into the tissues I have to carry with me ALL the time right now….
Fine. FINE!
I will leave you alone about the pollinating. You are….useful. And pretty. Just don’t take it too far, ok?
Also, thanks. You know - for all the oxygen and the using of carbon and stuff.
I would never actually do that. For starters, it’s not really a neighborhood and there are rarely kids around. Also our ‘lawn’ is not exactly the pristine variety. But, you know, I was making a point.
Approximately the brightness of the 3 suns.
I literally sneezed three times while I wrote that sentence.