For those who don't know their wildflowers, the one that is in bloom in yellow is goldenrod. The plant to the right of it is ragweed. It is wimpy ragweed too. The stuff here is 6' to 8' tall.

My allergies have been crazy since early August. It almost makes you wish for an early freeze.

Dawn

Mine have been awful too. I use a prescription med for allergies but the last couple of weeks it seems like it's lost its effectiveness. I asked the pharmacist about it and she said everyone with allergies is having more trouble than normal lately.

Suzie

Suzie,

No matter what else I take, I always end up dumping the others and relying on Benadryl. Nothing else dries up the drainage for me like it does. Do I like the sleepy, drugged way I feel while taking it? Nope. But, heck, it works.

Everyone here in our part of the state has had monstrous allergies this summer. We had really heavy rain in July (5") so everything grew like mad. We have a forest of ragweed around here, and lots of summer grasses have made incredible seedheads.

About the only good thing I can say about winter weather is that the allergies calm down, and we don't have snakes out and about scaring me to death during the cold months.

And, now that we've had all this rain, anyone who is allergic to molds and fungi likely will have a bad flare-up.

Dawn

12-hour Chlor-trimeton, rather than 4-hour Chlor-trimeton, works as well as, or better than, benedryl for me. It has the same punch as Benedryl, but it allows one to sleep through the night! It is SO nice to be able to sleep eight hours rather than getting up to take the benedryl every 6 hours!

Glad Hermine wasn't any worse..,

eh. NOT awake. Meant to ask, which antihistimines are you dumping?

Tavist, Claritin, Zyrtec are pretty much useless for me. Would like to hear your experience.

Hi merrybookwyrm,

I've tried all the ones you mentioned and they don't work for me either. Chlor-trimeton works somewhat for me, but nothing works as well for me as Benadryl.

So, you're in the D-FW metroplex? That's where I was born and grew up. We saw amazing footage of the metroplex's storm damage yesterday. I hope you made it through all the flooding and tornado stuff OK.

Dawn

The Ragweed in the photo is the smaller one, Ambrosia artemisiifolia, in all likelihood, and the large one that Dawn is talking about, is probably the Giant Ragweed, Ambrosia trifida. Unfortunately, a fellow who lives a couple houses from me, has a strip in the back of his house that is solidly packed with the Giant Ragweed. Wow! I have had the itchy eyes, red, weepy eyes, nasal drainage, itchy throat, coughing, and you name it this year. And now with the rain, the mold count will soar. I wish the guy would cut down his nice hedge-row of the Giant Ragweed. BTW, the Goldenrod, often thought of as causing allergies, does not.

Ragweed is pretty much an equal opportunity allergen employer. I believe it actually follows me in the door after I've been out in the garden, and resides on my clothing, hair, and skin! Ugh........

I emphathize with everyone, and none of those so-called new allergy medications like Zyrtec and Claritin, help me at all. Benedryl works some. Mostly I just try to suffer thru the season. My pharmacist told me to try to alternate the allergy medications like every couple weeks to a month because eventually you build up tolerances to the meds and they become ineffective. What kills me is spending all that money on the higher end allergy meds like the Zyrtec, just to figure out that it doesn't work! Grrrr......

So to all us sufferers, Cheers! At least we are not suffering in silence!

Susan

Susan,

Yes, ours is the giant ragweed. It grows everywhere here.

I read once about some states embarking on an aggressive program to eradicate 'all' ragweed from their states years ago in an effort to combat the allergy problems that way. (Ha! Good luck with that!) What did they learn? No matter how much money and time they spent, they still had ragweed, and it really didn't help much to try to take all of it out, because ragweed pollen can travel hundreds of miles through the air.

I guess with all the rain, allergy season probably will be worse than ever.

2010 is a very memorable year....for all the wrong reasons! I guess we can add a bad allergy year to the long list of weather issues: snow, sleet, ice, tornadoes, thunderstorms, flooding, flash flooding, wildfire, drought, heat, sky-high heat indices, etc. Did I leave out anything?

I'm hoping Mother Nature is kinder to all of us in 2011.

Dawn

Both of our kids (ummm, I probably should say adult children) have allergy problems too, and when they were young their pediatrician told me once that Oklahoma is the worst place for allergy sufferers because if it doesn't grow here, it blows here on the wind from all four directions. The prescription med I use is Flonase and it works pretty well most of the time. But the last two or three weeks I've felt almost like I'm not taking anything at all, so I add Benedryl at night. But I can't take Benadryl during the day because it makes me too sleepy to function.

Suzie

Suzie, It makes me too sleepy to function well too, but I take it anyway. Otherwise I have a constant sore throat and also have trouble sleeping. When I am 'under the influence' of Benadryl I am sort of a zombie, but I do manage to do a few simple household chores like laundry or mopping floors or vaccuming. I never attempt to cook anything fancy or do any canning while I have Benadryl in my system because I forget things or skip steps or something.

Tim tells me there is a 'horrible' upper respiratory infection going around down in the D-FW area and that several of the officers on his shift have had it and have missed several days of work. He said it is as hard to recover from as the swine flu. Good heavens! Until he said that last part, I was just wondering if they had bad allergies and didn't medicate themselves and ended up with sinus infections and/or throat infections. Now I'm wondering if we're going to have a wicked flu season.

Dawn

That reminds me, I need to get my flu vaccination. Fortunately, this year they have included the swine flu strain with the other flu strains in a single dose.

Dawn, I hope your list of our weather issues this year is totally complete and you didn't leave anything out! Because that's enough, for sure.

Don't forget, though, the grasshoppers and other bugs. I've been inundated this year. Right now, I have some kind of stink bug that is eating the seed pods on my Cleome. Also, my Datura. They appear to just eat seeds. Now, I have combated the spined soldier bug, which is a stink bug relative that is carnivorous because it eats my caterpillars, and the green one that is the foliage and fruit eater, but haven't come across this one that eats the dried and still green seed pods.

The spider mites have also been really bad this year, due to our significant dry heat we had much of the summer. I've just seen more spiders, bugs, bees, wasps, flies, and you name it this year than ever before. So, we might add this to your weather extremes, because it is weather-related.

I wish I didn't even have to go outside right now. But, the Monarch infants and sphinx moth infants need food. I am getting low on milkweed, and yet I still am finding almost 2 or 3 caterpillars per leaf! Geez, the Mamas were prolific this year.

So, anyway, I have to just deal with the allergies.

Susan

Interesting...ragweed doesn't affect me in the slightest. I looked it up on Wikipedia and found it is almost everywhere on planet earth, from South America to North America, Europe, Asia, and a few varieties even on the fringes of the Sahara Desert.

Another plant I can think of that seems to drive some people nuts and doesn't phase others is cilantro. I love the smell of chopped cilantro, love it's taste and everything about it. But I understand some people have a genetic disposition and find it revolting. Some people can roll their tongue and others cannot. Some love the taste of blue cheese and others will run from the room.

Go figure.

Susan, I guess I mentioned all the bugs elsewhere and not here....but yes, it is a horrid bug year and I feel that there is a definite connection to the weather. Organic farmers and gardeners in Texas were wrestling with the very same bug outbreaks I had here at about the same time or slightly earlier, so it seems like the outbreaks were weather-related.....like they had potato bugs just all of a sudden one day....none one day, gazillions a couple of days later....and so did I, although I had them about a week later than folks significantly south of me in Texas.

The stinkbugs that are eating seeds are new to me but I'm not surprised....stinkbugs are the worst pest on tomatoes and beans at our house every year....them and their relatives the leaf-footed bugs. I had tons of stinkbugs this year but relatively few leaf-footed bugs. You'd think they'd be bad at the same time since they're so closely related.

And, as for pleasant outbreaks......we have had the best dragonfly year here that we've had in ages, although we always have dragonflies here. Every time we've had a hard rain that left the ground wet and tons of big puddles, the really big brown dragonflies have held a convention at our place.....there are dozens out flying around the driveway and ponds right now while deer are checking out the compost piles a few feet away looking for something worth eating....a doe and two twin fawns that we've been seeing since July. The cottontail population has really dropped because we have a high bobcat population this year, but I suspect the cottontails will make a recovery within the next couple of months because I've begun seeing some really small ones coming to the chicken pen to scavenge for hen scratch at night and early in the morning.

One of the oddest critter anomalies this year.....tons of white-lined sphinx moths everywhere but not a hornworm to be seen in the veggie garden, and no damage on the tomato plants or daturas either. Perhaps they've been eating the native nightshades instead.

Robert, You're one of the lucky ones if ragweed doesn't make you miserable! I'm one of the ones who likes cilantro OK. I can take it or leave it. Tim, however, adores it and you have to watch him when he's making fresh salsa or he'll put so much cilantro in it that no one else will eat the stuff.

Dawn

I'd be adding tons of Cilantro to the salsa. too. I just almost crave the stuff.

Dawn, I'm raising a rare migrant Sphinx moth right now called the Obscure Sphinx (Erinnyis obscura). I found the larvae feeding on my Climbing Milkweed, or Honeyvine, or Blue Sand Vine, (Cynanchum laeve), and they have eaten almost all of it. The adults are quite lovely, dark, rich brown, with a bright orange underwing. Can't wait until they emerge from their cocoons.

You know, it's really odd. The White-lined Sphinx (Hyles lineata) is supposed to be our most common sphinx in Oklahoma and most other states, but I have yet to find the cats in my garden. Datura is one of their food plants, along with 4 o'clocks. But I have yet to find any on mine. I have raised 13 different genus/species so far, in my very small yard, and I keep thinking this will be the last species I see here, but am so surprised to continue finding new ones.

If anyone has milkweed in OKC, still willing to "loan" out a few Monarch cats, too. They are everywhere.

I have also had numerous bumblebees this year. I normally see a few, especially when the Wild Senna (Senna hebecarpa) is in bloom. They are out very early in the morning on it. But this year, they've just been everywhere. Good for pollination.

I've been feeding grasshoppers to my Argiope spider. She loves them! It's so cool to see her. I kinda toss the grasshopper into her web, and she runs to quickly wrap it up, turning it round and round until it is surrounded by her silk, Fascinating! Then she quickly retreats to her spot in the middle of the web patiently waiting for her next victim.

Susan

The best solution for allergies is to take the shots. I take two a week, and have very little problem. Also, I have gotten rid of all the grass on our property, and have sprayed Round Up around the creek where there is ragweed. I sprayed it about 3 weeks ago, and again last week. This does help, even though it is in the air.

I started the shots in 1980 because I am allergic to mosquito bites. Since I need the shots, there is no harm in keeping up with all of the mold and pollen parts too.

You know that if you need real Sudafed, you need to ask the pharmacist. They have substituted another product for the real Sudafed, because it is used to make "Meth", so the pharmacist needs to sell you the real thing.

Sammy

My right eye feels like it has a stick in it this morning...

I can relate to the stick in the eye. I take allergy medication daily and use Refresh or Naphcon-A as needed to help ease the eyes, both OTC medication.

Larry