With winter on the wane, I now have allergies to look forward to..

Advancing age brings with it a set of new challenges. My muscles atrophy and my joints ache whenever the weather outside changes even a little bit! But, now as winter is getting herself ready to exit stage right, along comes Ms. Spring with all her pollen laden tree friends and then the fun really begins!

In some years, there's even a 'magic point in time' where I find myself still aching from cold related weather events while also am fully involved with teary eyes and a running nose! That generally occurs in late March when we can still get cold snaps, but yet all the trees around me are also producing pollen like there's no tomorrow! (Living, at that point, becomes a challenge as I find I must stay indoors hugging an air purifier while taking aspirin for the pain)...

One great site that covers all things pollen, pretty well is Pollen.com. They have interactive maps that allow you to drill down to your particular area and to even see what the most prevalent pollen producers are. The graphic above was for this date in February. I was also informed that the culprit

for that date was the Juniper trees that adorn all the hillsides around where I live. On some special days when the air is still, you can see pollen rising from them in the form of a slightly reddish smoke! Oh joy! When those tiny particles make it into my nose, my body instantly assumes some alien invasion has occurred and throttles up my immune system to Condition Red! It's like getting an instant case of the flu! Wham bam thank you m'am! Maybe I'll get smart one of these days and move out to the desert where the only things to worry about will be rattlesnakes and scorpions...