Let me make sure you’re clear on two things before you read the rest of my post: I love trees and spring quite a bit? Got it? Okay.

Now, what I don’t like is allergy season and Poplar trees. I’ve always suffered from allergies. When I was a kid, pollen would literally hospitalize me. Midnight rushes to emergency to hook me up to a respirator wheren’t uncommon. I was what Victorian novelists would have called “a sickly and pale child”. Tracking my allergies in adulthood using the Claritin Pollen Report has confirmed that my spore-belching nemeses are the Poplar and the Birch trees.

Who can hate Birch trees? They’re singularly lovely. There is nothing like puttering along a Birch-lined shore in a canoe in cottage country. It feels like you’re in a Group of Seven painting.

The Poplar, however, has no redeeming qualities. It is a giant weed. Its arboreal Coffeemate, close enough to a tree that if you absolutely have to use one you can convince yourself it will do. Developers use the things to try and convince you that their McMansions have been around for more than a year. They’re the official flora of undifferentiated drab suburbia. They smell sickly and diseased on hot, humid summer days, and they drop these sticky red things. In short: Poplars suck. I hate ‘em.

This year, my lovely wife got me to start taking this homeopathic remedy early. Its called Pollinosan, and its very nearly dancing-in-Poplar-thatch effective. I take two little tabs under the tongue three times a day, and its kept me relatively functional during a season in which I historically pray for death.

If you’re at all prone to allergy attacks, I’d suggest you get to a health store and try Pollinosan out. Its not much more than a week’s supply of something like Claritin for a month’s worth, and I’m sure it takes fewer years off your life than these allergy nuclear weapons do.