On the homestead blog: now that it’s all gone, some pictures of our recent dusting of snow.

@dejus That looks like quite a forest at the edge of your property, or is it just a trick of the camera angle?

@Miraz That edge slopes down fairly steeply into a valley. Our property ends at the bottom of the valley. There’s about half an acre of trees on that edge of our property, with more on neighboring properties. We live in a forestry area (also where about half of the Christmas trees for the US come from).

@dejus Wow. That's a huge amount of Christmas trees. Nice to have a little forest on your boundary, but is there a pollen problem?

@Miraz I think there’s more of a pollen problem from nearby hay farms — this area also has a lot of horse properties. Every year around late spring / early summer my nose runs like crazy. Though I suppose it could be from trees, too... not sure how much pollen fir trees spray.

@dejus I don’t think fir trees spray any pollen at all as they have pine cones. But if there’s birch trees in the area, that’s probably it. Also hay/grass pollen usually don’t appear until mid summer (at least in my country). I don’t know how you feel about vaccinations, but I’ve heard they’re coming with a pill that you’ll only need to take once a year to get a vaccine against birch tree allergies. It treats the cause, rather than only the symptoms. The pill is called Itulazax. 💊 I’m looking forward to this, as I won’t have to take antihistamines all summer. (I’m not a health professional, and this is only my personal preference, so don’t take this as medical advice).

@odd That sounds promising. Sometime I should get tested to see what causes my early summer discomfort. It isn’t excessively bad, but it is unpleasant. I’d certainly be interested in a pill that helped with that.