Painting in a Blizzard (In Duncan, B.C., in May)

If one lives in certain parts of Canada, seeing a bit of snow in early May is not, unfortunately,  terribly unusual. This year, for example,  a snowstorm in early May covered a swath of territory from Sudbury to Kingston and there were a few times that the Western Rockies got dumped on late in the season. But Duncan and the Cowichan Valley in general are called the "warmlands" for a reason. We may get a week or two of "winter" each year. Winter for the area means one or two snowstorms (the snow usually melting within a week or two) and a few weeks of slight minus zero temperatures. But what we have here, and not in the other parts of Canada that I have lived in doesn't, is cottonwood trees. 

I had read about cottonwoods for years - usually in some novel about the south. In every story about the people travelling across the American plains, there seemed to be a river valley that was lined in cottonwood trees. Those places were places of sanctuary, of calmness where weary travellers could catch their breath, water their stock and get prepare for the next horrible bit of travelling. It seemed as if all of the trees were huge, gnarly, ancient and harmless. The cottonwoods that encircle my community of mobile homes may be big and for all I know they could be old, but the ones around me are certainly not entirely harmless.

I never knew until I moved here, why cottonwoods were called cottonwood. Now I do. Every May the trees produce copious amounts of white fluff that drifts down from the trees and covers everything. It goes on for days and days, the individual tiny cottonwoods seeds that are carried by these bits of white fluff drift and swirl about for the entire day. The seed pods are so light that as the day gets warmer, the seeds rise from the black, paved street, on the air currents generated by the warm sun. In a stronger breeze, the fluff blows around in a hundred different directions, sometimes forming mini cyclone/dust devil twists of air and seeds. At the worst, it looks as if we are in the middle of a significant blizzard. The fluff gets trapped in corners of rock gardens or other structures. Twice this week I have had to vacuum them from my carport. Along one wall, the pile of this light fluffy stuff was 8 inches high, five feet long and  6 inches wide. Twice!!. My back lawn, which is a pretty dismal excuse for a lawn, is now white. The most common sound in my neighbourhood is the sound of a shop vac running for what feels like hours as people try to get rid of the stuff. Anyone with asthma or upper respiratory issues stays inside as much as possible.  All of my neighbours are praying for rain, just so the damn stuff can be washed away.

I decided a few weeks ago to do a little bit of painting. Just a bit of the trim. The job has grown significantly in that now the eaves troughs have been cleaned and painted, the downpipes dismantled, scrapped and painted, all of the trim has been washed and painted and the skirting around the mobile home has been repaired and painted. As I dislike painting just about as much as I dislike being on a ladder - it has not been a fun two weeks. It has been significantly less fun because of all of the cottonwood seeds drifting about. The damn stuff clings to my dew-wet shoes and then somehow chemically bonds to the leather so that it doesn't come off, it gets in my beard, it is attracted to my glasses as if they were magnets attracted to glass and it gets on the brush and into the paint can.

 When my neighbours ask me how the painting is going, I just say that I like things with texture - and the siding certainly has texture now.