May Snow?

When we purchased our house a couple of years ago, we were very excited about all the trees in the front yard. Little did we know, however, that one of the byproducts of these trees was a plague of cotton in the month of May. I guess these trees were not quite that simple Quaken Aspen variety that I grew up with in the nearby hills of Arbon Valley. These trees have a strain of cottonwood in them.

During the beginning or middle of May, Cotton begins to fill the air. It is hard to walk outside and not get caught and particles in your nose and in your lungs. It does wonders for the allergies. Another problem with the cotton is that if you leave the door open to the house for any small duration of time, the airborne cotton loves to make its way into the house onto the floor and carpet. It is always a mess to clean up. If you walk in it it will cling to your shoes and then when you walk on the carpet it sticks to the carpet.

Last Sunday I took this picture of the cotton in our yard. The blanket of cotton looked just like a new fresh blanket of snow. I try to rake it up earlier this week. However, it's very hard to rake cotton. It tends to ball up and stay in the grass rather than gather on your rake.

On Tuesday night, however, we had a Pacific storm rolling in. Part of that storm was high gusts of wind during the night. Ever since that windstorm, we have not seen any more cotton flying in the air. I am hoping that the wind has blown away any leftover cotton blossoms on our trees. Luckily, the cotton season only lasts a week to 10 days. Other than that we still get to enjoy the shade of the trees provide in front of our home. I guess there will always be trade-offs between the plants we love and their byproducts that they produce.