Springtime in Southern Virginia was always both my favorite and least favorite time of the year. My favorite because of the warm (but not too warm) sunny weather and the flowers coming into bloom. My least favorite because of the pollen from said flowers and trees. The trees in particular would create a dusty yellow pollen that covered everything in sight. Yellow cars, yellow roads, rivers of yellow running down the streets to the drains. Yellow dust everywhere. Pollen was such a problem that the local news channels even included a “pollen count” as part of the weather forecast.
For a month or two, that yellow dust was my nemesis. Springtime meant sneezing, watery, itchy eyes, and a runny nose. And if I chose not to suffer the miseries of hay fever, I’d walk around in a fog induced by allergy medicine.
But here in England, there are glorious things that bloom in the springtime, brilliant yellow amazing things that don’t start me wheezing. Rapeseed fields specifically. I’d never heard of rapeseed before I moved here (basically it’s where canola oil comes from). But it’s one of the best things about the English countryside in Spring.
And while I love to capture the golden-yellow fields against the backdrop of a brilliant blue sky, sometimes catching them against an amazingly dark and foreboding sky is just as good.
