After mowing yesterday, my head was sore. That, despite popping (unprompted) the pill my wife usually has to insist I swallow. And no wonder, TWC’s pollen alert:
| Type | Level |
| Tree |  High |
| Grass |  Very High |
| Weed |  Moderate |
Grass is my worst allergy.
On the fun front, I mowed two big circles into the backyard lawn. I told the young miss that her initial, B, could now be seen by airplanes flying overhead.
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Catholic Sensibility 
I feel your pain. When I’m feeling fine, I forget to take my Claritin. Then when I start feeling badly, I remember that I haven’t been taking it. (And it’s one of those that takes several days to build up in your system.)
Btw, generic loratadine is available at Costco for $13 for a 365-day supply ($10 when the put it on sale in early March annually). Worth the price of membership for that alone.
Tree pollen is my worst enemy, especially the lethal juniper/cedar pollen (one of the most allergenic pollens) that kicks off the season in later winter (this year, due to the warmth of our winter in the Boston area, tree pollen season started the first week of February – people don’t expect it because they don’t see anything in bloom yet.
Grasses started blooming here last week, in the third week of April. Incredibly early. But our fall-winter-spring pattern here in the suburbs of Boston has been that of Charlotteville Virginia. (The dogwoods started blooming on Patriots Day (the Boston Marathon), while historically they would be in bloom around Mother’s Day here.) Lilacs are already starting to go by; traditionally, the famed Lilac Sunday festival at the Arnold Arboretum (surpassed only by the Lilac Festival at Highland Park in Rochester NY – lilacs, like peonies, flower most vigorously after a cold winter) is traditionally the Sunday after Mother’s Day. This year, it’s on Mother’s Day, but the lilacs will be fully gone by.
At this rate, we’ll have ragweed by Independence Day (normally August around here, whenever the goldenrod are in bloom, though people mistakenly confuse ragweed pollen, which is highly allergenic, with goldenrod pollen, which is too big to be allergenic). How dreadful.
Yeah much love for my 365-day supply of Claritin. Costco (and BJ’s) is weird though.
As a lifelong allergy sufferer, Flonase (prescription, nose spray) has worked for me along with Claritin. I started my daily meds in February anticipating early pollen after a mild winter. It’s good to get the meds into your system before the allergy season. I’ll stop in June and start again the end July before ragweed season which continues until first real frost here in New England.
I am finding that we don’t get a pollen-stopping hard freeze until late November or early December in recent years…. So that the pollen-free season, which used to be 5 months, is now less than 3 months (two months this year).