In the middle of November, the three conifer trees outside our apartment in Siena, Italy started dropping their pollen cones. The pollen would come out, staining the scaletta steps, as the cones hit the ground. Chiara Rose and I spent many days collecting the cones. We then spread them on the floor and dried them out, before spending hours rolling each one between the palms of my hands, breaking them apart, separating and then sifting the scales from the fine yellow powder. We were able to collect nearly one gallon of this precious material.