They're Here

Nooooooo.  They’re here.  We always knew they’d come.  Every year ten or so days into the smile of spring that infectious sense that things just keep getting better is interrupted by the Cottonwood Poplar puffs.  And, like some ‘Trouble with Tribbles’ episode on Star Trek; where there is one, there will soon be one hundred. 

I went out to drive to the airport early this morning.  I opted to meet a colleague out there as it required a twenty-minute drive rather than the full hour a drive into his place in the city would have meant.  Slipping my shoes on by the door I looked outside and noticed an innocent white puff swirling around in the air, pushed along by a gentle breeze.  “Is it starting?” I wondered. 

It is a few hours later now and that, apparently is all it takes for the city’s plantation to germinate.  Some feral message that I cannot detect, mixed with the bright sun, born on the wind’s breath has flipped the hormonal switch on every tree in the neighborhood.  Out the back yard they are swirling now, hundreds of them, bouncing innocently along over the dusty tiles and the dusty leaves, gathering dirt, gathering weight, settling down in piles in every corner. 

An article from last year suggests the city was going to do something about this.  In an approach vaguely reminiscent of the one-child policy, the city was implementing a plan to sterilize all the female Cottonwood trees with injections.  I don’t see any evidence, I’m afraid, of this urban forestry sterilization program’s efficacy.  And for the next few weeks, spring will now become increasingly dirty.