Stop! Look! Listen! Smell! …and Itch!
Honeysuckle
Our big blue ceanothus is a-buzz with bees. Our honeysuckle intrudes its sweet fragrance into all corners of the garden and our Dorothy Perkins are plump and pink on their twining branches. It’s summer here. No doubt about it and never mind when the solstice is.
Nyel and I have been spending most of our waking hours in the garden – he on his vegetable patch and me on the flower beds. He has been planting. And weeding. I’ve been mulching. And weeding.
Dorothy Perkins
I think our division of garden labor is typical of our individual approaches to most everything. Nyel, always the practical one, concentrates on the edibles. I, the one who believes ‘appearances are everything’ am happiest when things look tidy. Hemlock bark mulch, in addition to its other benefits, is just the ticket.
But, as with most endeavors these days, there is a price to pay. For Nyel, it is his back, as in pain and suffering. Not unusual – it can happen anytime and for any reason. He just soldiers on. For me it is, of all things, hives! I’ve determined that I’m allergic to the mulch – probably mold spores lurking there – and antihistamines do the trick, although they make me almost too groggy to work.
Nyel among the Lettuces
The only other time I’ve suffered from hives, I was twelve and living here in Oysterville. Between cool baking soda baths, I was kept in bed – a totally miserable lump of itch. My eyes swelled shut and I could hardly speak for my huge lips. I remember that some of my friends came calling and stood at the foot of the bed just staring at me. Finally the doctor came from Ilwaco and gave me some sort of shot – cortisone? – and the misery gradually went away. We never did figure out the why of it but I’ve never forgotten the ‘Horror of Hives’.
I had already spread twenty or more 25-pound bags of mulch on the beds when the first itchy lumps appeared. I have to say that it was the internet to the rescue! A little research, a trip to the drugstore for over-the-counter help, and I seem to have nipped the problem in the bud. The irony of my “appearances are everything” philosophy leading to disfiguring hives was not lost on me!
But… the flower beds are looking great!
One time strawberries were the culprit for me–as in too many of them. I was in high school and broke out in hives that looked like a terrible case of acne. I had a date with an “older man” who had graduated the year before. I was devastated. I can’t remember if my mother gave me antihistamines or not. They were prescription back then, but by the time I had allergic children we bought bottles of the liquid for the sufferers.