One way to mark the passing days of spring

Some people measure the passage of spring by the emergence of buds, flowers and other leafy things. I measure it by what my car looks like.

My car is white, the perfect canvas for a display of what nature, in all its glory, can throw at us. Spring has officially arrived (even if it doesn’t say so on the calendar) when my car turns green.

I’m assuming this green stuff is pollen that descends from above, probably from the canopy of big trees over my driveway. Whatever it is, it covers the car with a heavy coating that is suitable for writing phrases such as “Wash me! I can’t breathe!” in big block letters.

The next phase of spring is signaled by the deluge of the brown stuff. This, too, comes from the trees and resembles thousands of clusters of dirty brown yarn with little black pods attached.

A botanist could tell you what these things are and the role they play in the healthy life of a tree. All I know is that they turn my car brown, get stuck in all the crevices and air ducts, and pile up in the yard like tons of used packing material.

Eventually they stop falling. But they are followed by an army of green inchworms, hanging in wait on a silken thread to hide in your hair or rappel down the back of your neck.

This year’s regiments of inchworms are smaller in number than in past years, but plenty of them are hanging around. They not only are annoying, but alarmingly destructive.

They can turn a prized bush into a fine filigree of chomped salad overnight. As for my car, they like to lay in wait on the windshield, where the wipers turn them into a long green smear of inchworm innards.

The good news is that the car now is covered mostly in bird droppings and dark brown specks from the trees, which indicates that spring is nearly over. Hallelujah!

But it’s not over yet, and earlier this month I was tormented by a sore throat, congested chest and a runny nose. I can’t help but believe spring had something – if not everything – to do with it.

If pollen can turn my car green, why can’t it do the same to my throat, the inside of my nose and my lungs? I rarely have allergy problems, but I have talked with others who say this year is different, with more free-floating gunk in the atmosphere.

It is either that or those pesky elves are sprinkling my throat with finely ground glass as I sleep.

I know that poets traditionally pen odes to spring, lovingly wrought love songs to the season of rebirth and renewal. Somehow an ode to the season of gargling doesn’t seem poetic.

What really is appealing is the thought of a big, burly thunderstorm, the kind that lasts only for a few hours but still hurls buckets of cleansing water from the heavens in blinding silvery torrents, drowning the pestilential inch worms, scrubbing the pollen from the air, pounding the fallen brown stuff into the ground.

And with luck, I won’t even have to wash my car.

This story was originally published April 21, 2016 at 3:30 PM with the headline "One way to mark the passing days of spring."