If you’re not living with it, you’ve probably heard by now that parts of the U.S., particularly the southeast, are having a pollen outbreak of historic proportion, something to do with spring temperatures arriving later than usual, as I understand. I’m one of those fortunate people who doesn’t have to think about such things normally, but this is something. Yellow dust on everything, inside and out, billowing clouds of the stuff blowing through the tree tops and down the streets. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but a story from USA Today reported that while a normal high pollen count would be 120 (however they count pollen), the pollen count in Atlanta this past weekend was 5733. It’s certainly believable. And that rain that’s fallen regularly since the middle of last summer? Nowhere to be seen in the supposedly wet month of April. Still, as Rigger Steve reminded us yesterday with a poem from William Wordsworth, “The budding twigs spread out their fan, To catch the breezy air; And I must think, do all I can, That there was pleasure there.”