This Stage in Life: Spring Color

I've been quite behind in getting news and photos posted, I know, but I will endeavor to do better. Today's post is about spring coming to Douglasville for 2012. Spring down here is just incredibly beautiful with so much color about it's really pretty impossible to describe without seeing it for yourself. With the warmer weather coming sooner, things started popping earlier and faster. This is my 3rd spring here now and this one seemed to come in overnight.

Now, in order for all the color to come out and the buds to appear and all of that nature stuff, pollen has to be present. Boy... did we have a pollen season come in with a blast and it's not over yet. I never really looked to see what a pollen count number meant until I heard we were setting records. For the record, 900+ is heavy, 1400+ is extreme. Well, we were running in the 9300+ count !!! I had to use the blower to blow it off the deck and such and of course just walking on the grass, or even the driveway, stirred it up. Cars going down the street stirred it up. It was really something. And then, finally, we got some rain to knock it down a bit and with the rain comes new pollen experiences. The pictures below give just a little indication to how much there was.

This is after a bit of rain. Doesn't this look like some giant was walking down the street and deposited a giant-sized loogie in the gutter? I'm talking gross.

Love when that tree blossoms! Kinda nice, for sure.

And now, about another 2 weeks have gone by and a new color scheme. The white blossoms on the tree have given way to green leaves, the rose bushes are starting to blossom and the grass is actually showing more green having been tan for the last 3 months. That thing that looks like a stick coming out of the ground is one of my heavily pruned crepe myrtles. We'll see how it goes this year.

With the warmer weather I did get outside to tend to some other ugliness, the top rails on the deck. I just did these suckers a couple of years ago but due to 'things' they had really taken a beating from the sun and weather. Last summer my friends Bill and Jane were visiting and it took Bill all of 2 seconds to look at it and point out that I had put at least a couple of the boards on upside down... growth rings bowing up, not down... which certainly played a part in them getting beat up. Since he told me that, I've run across the same warning elsewhere. Perhaps an even bigger factor was my coating them in polyurethane which I've also learned is NOT for outdoor use unless you use 'spar' urethane. Well, I got to sanding them down to bare wood, staining them, and then giving them 3 coats of spar urethane. At the moment, we think they're beautiful, and they are. Now to see if it lasts :)