Sneezing time

THIS IS A MISERABLE TIME of year for many allergy sufferers. Unfortunately, people with allergies often blame the wrong plants, which does nothing to relieve their suffering and may prevent them or even their neighbors from planting harmless species.

Left, the pollen of Common ragweed causes most respiratory allergies at this time of year. This photo is by Forest and Kim Starr, via the Wikipedia Commons.

As it happens, a wildlife-friendly garden is likely to be an allergy-sufferer's best friend. Why? Because plants that are pollinated by insects tend to have heavy pollen. Because it’s heavy, this pollen is not carried on the wind, which means that it does not have a chance to get into your nose and start the immune-system reaction known as an allergy attack. So a wildlife-friendly garden full of flowers that are being visited by butterflies, bees, and other pollinators is not likely to cause allergic reactions.

In late summer, the chief cause of respiratory allergy symptoms is ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia). This is an annual weed that’s common in the Northeast, Midwest, and South. Although it’s native to North America, I’ve never heard anyone recommend it as a garden plant!

Ragweed pollen can travel hundreds of miles but most of it lands near the plant, so the closer the plant is to you the more likely it is that the pollen will end up in your nose. If there is any ragweed growing near you, the best way to dispose of it is probably to wet it down (to make the pollen grains heavy, so they don’t scatter), then cut it back carefully and again carefully put the stems into a plastic garbage bag, which can be put out with the trash. The best time to do this would be early on a chilly morning, when pollen production would be at its lowest.

For future years, the best way to keep ragweed off your property is to plant aggressive perennials, preferably ones that are pollinated by insects, because these plants can prevent the annual ragweed from getting a foothold in your garden. In other words, have a wildlife-friendly garden! Goldenrod might be a good choice because it is insect pollinated and extremely aggressive.

One warning: People who are allergic to ragweed pollen may also be allergic to the pollen of other plants in the Aster family. Now, the Aster family is huge and includes many wonderful wildlife-friendly plants with heavy pollen, including Goldenrod and Purple coneflower. It would be a tragedy for any wildlife-friendly gardener to give up these plants altogether. But if you are allergic to ragweed, you may want to plant these species further from your house and avoid bringing the flowers into your house or working right next to them during pollen season. Sniffing the flowers of plants in the Aster family would also be ill-advised, as that would pull even heavy pollen into your nose.

Meanwhile, here are a few ways to keep allergies under control this time of year. Most of them come from the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology.

• Try to stay inside with the windows closed when pollen counts are high. This is generally between 10 am and 4 pm on dry days. (Rainy days are safer because the rain washes the pollen out of the air.) You can get local pollen counts from the National Allergy Bureau at (800)-9-POLLEN, or http://www.pollen.com/.
• An air conditioner helps because it cools and dries the air, an HEPA filter can clean the pollen out of the air.
• And of course you need to avoid anything that would stir up pollen or bring pollen into your house during pollen season, from raking leaves to hanging clothes outside to dry (because pollen collects on the clothes). If you've been working outside, change your clothes when you come inside.
• If you do go outside when pollen counts are high, you could try wearing a pollen mask.
• Another tip is to keep your bedroom closed up during the day and then bathe before you go to bed. This will prevent pollen from getting into your bedding.
• Also, I'm sure any allergy sufferer who is willing to take drugs has already tried all the over-the-counter drugs, but have you tried nasal rinsing? This will wash pollen grains out of your sinus cavities. Here are instructions from the AAAAI.

Happy Groundhog Day!

FEBRUARY 1-2 FALLS MIDWAY between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox. We are now one quarter of the way between the longest night of the year and the shortest.

Many festivals are associated with these two days. February 2 is Groundhog Day, Candlemas, Imbolc/Imbolg, or the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, depending on your tradition. The Feast of St. Brigid is celebrated on February 1, especially in Ireland.

In Northern Europe these festivals were associated with the beginning of spring, as they coincide with the time when ewes can first be milked, seeds sown the previous fall begin to grow, and there are other signs of new life. In northern North America, this is High Winter, the time when we are likely to see our coldest weather.

Only uncertainty is abundant

This is a time to face uncertainty and the worry that goes with it. Earlier generations would have looked with concern at their remaining supplies of firewood and food: Is there enough to keep us going until winter is over and fresh food becomes available at last? The rest of the winter was likely to be unpleasant, with increasingly stale foodstuffs being parsimoniously doled out. A prolonged winter could mean starvation. One old saying reported from Vermont is that on Candlemas you should still have half your hay and half your wood. In some parts of Ireland, the Feast of St. Brigid is celebrated by leaving a sheaf of corn and an oat cake on the doorstep for fairies to eat. This is a sign of gratitude for the previous year’s good crops and a wish for the next year’s crops to do equally well.

No doubt many people checked their woodpiles and larders at this time and found them wanting, just as many people today are looking at their investments and wondering how they’ll make it through retirement.

Not surprisingly many traditions emphasize efforts to predict how long winter will last. An English saying is:

If Candlemas be fair and bright, Winter has another flight.

If Candlemas brings clouds and rain, Winter will not come again.

We also have the tradition of watching animals for signs of how much longer winter will hang on. The custom of observing one specific animal on one particular day probably arose in Germany, where hedgehogs were probably the animals of choice. (It may not be a coincidence that hedgehogs were at one time considered sacred to the Great Goddess.) Groundhogs were used once the tradition moved to North America.

A Time for Preparation

Some cultures cope with the uncertainty of this time by engaging in rituals of purification. The Ancient Romans named the month of February after their word februare, which means “to purify” (and seems to have found its way into the product name “Febreze”), and dedicated this month to cleansing and purification.

The association of February with purification lasted through the Middle Ages and into modern times. Often rituals were used to purify or cleanse the fields before they could be planted. Among the Celts, Imbolc may have been celebrated by a ritual procession around the farm, designed to create a protective boundary around the land. In the movie “Groundhog Day”, the character played by Bill Murray is forced to relive February 2 over and over again until he … well, you should watch the movie and see for yourself.

Contemporary versions of these ancient rituals of might be to mend clothes, repair broken objects, sharpen knives and other tools, paint a room, clean out a closet or your inbox, save money, write a will. You could open that statement and find out how much is left in your retirement account. You could watch “Groundhog Day” or visit the groundhogs at a local zoo. You could wonder how long the Recession will last. Ask the groundhog if he happens to know—he probably knows as much as the economists do.

This season is a particularly hopeful one for gardeners. This is when we get out the paper and pencils, the catalogs, the gardening books, the wish lists of plants, and start planning out gardens. It's also a good time to inspect your tools and do any maintenance or sharpening you neglected to do when you put them away (or, like me, threw them in a corner of the garden storage space) in the fall. On nicer days, take a walk around your property and look for signs that animals are becoming active once again. Think about pruning shrubs and trees while they are dormant. It's easier to see the architecture of a deciduous plant when it has no leaves. And don't forget to put out food for the birds (and fairies)!

A poem for Groundhog Day

By Lynn Ungar

Celebrate this unlikely oracle,
this ball of fat and fur,
whom we so mysteriously endow
with the power to predict spring.
Let's hear it for the improbable heroes who,
frightened at their own shadows, nonetheless unwittingly work miracles. …

For the rest of the poem with a photo and music, please visit the Panhala website.

Happy Winter Solstice

Radio carbon dating shows that construction of Stonehenge began in about 3100 BC and was completed around 1600 BC. The alignment of the stones suggests that it was used to commemmorate the Winter and Summer solstices. Photo by Frederic Vincent courtesy of Wikimedia, distributed under a Creative Commons 2.0 ShareAlike license.

TONIGHT AT 1:08 EASTERN STANDARD TIME, the sun will be at its furthest distance from the Northern Hemisphere, and we here above the equator will be in the midpoint of the longest night of the year. This is Winter Solstice, which humans have marked in one fashion or another for some 7,000 years. Traditionally this is a time when humans drive away the dark by lighting candles and keeping a Yule log burning all night.

This is the black depth of the year
in which the seasons, circling near,
are pulled into the vortex; here
the bonfires of midwinter burn.

The quickening spirits of the Spring
whirl round their bright bewildering,
and with the energies they bring
we conjure up the sun's return.

—British-Canadian poet Robin Skelton

However much we may be divided by nationality, ideology, or religion, the Winter Solstice reminds us that we are one species sharing one planet. I wish you light on this long, dark night.