Flowers flowers everywhere
I went for a nature walk last night and was really surprised by how much has bloomed since I last went out. It's rained for the last 4 days and I guess that's really influenced the calendar of wildflowers. This is a puddle rimmed by pine pollen. The pine pollen doesn't usually come out until later in the month or early June. Pine pollen is a fine yellow powder that's kind of greasy and hard to clean up that gets on everything--your car, your deck, your house. It doesn't usually come out until after Memorial Day, so if we open camp Mem. Day weekend all the furniture on the porches gets covered with it and your sinuses get really irritated when you sit down on it.

This looks like a puddle that's been polluted by something, doesn't it. It's funny to me when things that are completely natural look as if humankind has made the mess. Once there was a picture of Silver Lake in the publication of NY State's Dept. of Environmental Conservation, a color aerial photo that showed a huge amount of brown foam where the creek on my land flowed into the lake. The creek is full of tannic acid because it runs near the bog (the campers called it Coca Cola Creek when they were in camp). The caption beneath the photo said the foam was evidence of pollution caused by man. They had to run a retraction in the next issue