Nature at Work

It's always cool to discover something new at my age and then to find that others who are older & have lived in that area weren't aware of it either.

Recently, while sitting up amongst the trees in Newfoundland, enjoying the view of the sea with friend, we witnessed a big puff of yellow smoke' in front of us. We both wondered if we imagined it, then suddenly it happened a few feet away again. And again - all around us there were 'puffs' - like explosions.


In going closer to see what it could be, we bumped one of the beautiful spruce trees that were laden with gorgeous magenta spruce buds (which had caused me to make a trip home for my camera). The bump caused a mini-explosion, which solved the mystery - it was clouds of pollen that we were witnessing. It wasn't evident anywhere on branches or buds - never did figure out the actual source as the buds were clean & crisp.

Earlier that day, we had noticed a gross yellow sludge. In fact, Brian wondered if I had dumped yellow paint into the water. As if. I pointed out that it was thick, all around the entire coastline of the harbour. It was the pollen - obviously HUGE amounts of it.



I mentioned it to a local later that evening and she was just as surprised as we were. She said that she'd never heard of it or seen it before that day and was relieved to know what it was too. She said 'All day, when I was looking out my window , I thought that there were forest fires starting with huge puffs of smoke coming the from trees - I even mentioned it to my husband.' So ... it just wasn't the 'newbies'. It was interesting how the entire forest was pollenating at the same time - must have been 'Pollenation Day'.