254/365 Sweet Gum Ball

For my non-midwesterners. Sweetgum trees personified. First, some stock photos.

Sweetgums are gorgeous fall color trees. Bright orange, yellow, purple, red, all on the same tree. The ones in Tower Grove, easily over 100 years old, are on fire every fall. Breathtaking.
Pretty star shaped leaves that have multiple colors. They have a spicy, pleasant smell when torn or crushed. I love the sweetgum outside my front walk--it's a street tree and it shades my front yard. Pretty and big and healthy.

But this is the seed pod it drops. And it drops them, not all at once, not all in a few weeks' time, but constantly:


And this is how things look pretty much all the time if you have a sweetgum tree nearby:Ok, not always that bad, but rake them a bit and you have a huge pile of these sweetgum balls, these absolutely useless pointy hard round things. Step on them, and they slip beneath your feet, making you prone to fall. If you're barefoot, well, you slip and your heel hurts from the points.

So they are everywhere. They get ground down into the yard so they are hard to rake out. They easily germinate, too, so I have all these annoying baby sweetgums all over my planting beds in front. And the sidewalks, as you can see below, become treacherous. This isn't my sweetgum, but Gretchen's--mine is bigger and even more prolific.
But I still love them, even with their flaws. Not every tree can be an ash or a hard maple.