Scented

For several hours I've been smelling smoke. The night was too warm for anyone to have had a fire in their fireplace. It smells like brush in any case. Dawn has revealed no stain on any visible horizon, but the smell of smoke lingers. There's quite a breeze blowing, too. It's awfully early in the year for fire season to begin. In the valley, they haven't even finished with spring flooding yet. Overlapping disasters are so tiresome.

Anyway.

Spring fever time, I think. Just about everybody seems to be feeling a bit odd in one way or another. It's the plant kingdom's annual revenge on humans for eating them. They dose us with their pollen and various parts of our bodies or brains go out of whack. I'm feeling quite thick-headed today. I hope I can sleep with the smell of smoke in the air. It's a bit unnerving.

Arboreal Violence

It's the pines that are pollinating now. However much the mulberry tree's sexual activities make me sneeze, it is the pines getting it on that brings my worst reactions. Oh, the vegetable porn is exhausting! I can barely drag myself around today. Everything is covered with a fine yellow dust- tree spooge!- and it accumulates so quickly that a car parked for half an hour will noticeably change color. I'm trapped in an abusive relationship with a forest, and it gets worse every year. Each spring the ponderosas beat the crap out of me, but I find them irresistible, and I always forgive them. Things would be much better if I could go stay in San Francisco for a couple of weeks each May. That isn't going to happen, though. Oh, how I miss the sweet urban smog this time of year!