Springtime In Augusta

Ah, it’s springtime in Augusta, GA. Masters Week is here, and the major thoroughfares are clogged with traffic. This week was Spring Break for all the schools in the area, and many Augusta natives left town last weekend for the entire week of the golf tournament. Many of them rent their homes out to visitors and it usually is enough to pay for the week of vacation.

Springtime in Augusta brings another phenomenon that people in other areas of the country do not get in the quantity that we do. It is pollen season. There has been a yellow cloud of pollen over the entire city for about a week now. It looks like yellow haze, and thank God my wife and I aren’t allergic to it.

The main tree in Augusta is the Georgia Pine. These majestic fir trees are great eye candy, but they shed pollen at an enormous rate. They do so over about a two-week period, and woe be to anyone who has to park their vehicle outside.


Here is a picture of my Ford Taurus after a night out on the pad in front of my town home. This is a silver gray car, so the yellow pollen doesn’t show up in the picture as much as it does to the eye. You can see it on the back window though. And you can just imagine what a darker colored car looks like.


Well, maybe you can’t, so above is a neighbor’s black Mercedes.

Another illustration of the amount of pollen that gets dispersed is this picture of a concrete slab for some new town homes that are being built on my street. It was poured the prior afternoon. This isn’t really yellow concrete; that is pollen from one night of exposure.

The car wash businesses in Augusta always have a special on for these times where they will give you a “pollen wash” at a discount. I guess they just give the car a power rinse to wash off the worst of the pollen.

Otherwise, it would be necessary to wash your car every day to keep the yellow pollen coating removed. It is especially nasty on windshield and rear windows. And you can’t remove it very well with the washer and wipers on your car. It just smears.

We finally did get a good hard rain Thursday night that rinsed off the cars that were out in the open, like mine. Those in garages, like my wife’s car, are still coated until the next car washing.

I hope you plan to watch some of the Masters Golf Tournament this weekend, even if you aren’t a golf fanatic. The flowers on the course are in full bloom, and they really enhance the view. The “Amen Corner” is, as always, the best of the best, too. And Tiger is back, which makes me happy regardless of his sins.

Yes, spring is a wonderful time of the year, but I sure will be glad when pollen season is over.