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sale who can’t sell the cake she spent all night baking and icing, except this was worse. I wasn’t selling anything. The sweetgum trees were free, and I couldn’t even give mine away.

I decided to turn on the charm offensive and exercise my talents as a salesperson.

“Hey, you need one or two of these sweetgum trees in your yard. They produce a lot of shade and are stunning in the autumn,” I said to the next round of passersby, and instead of asking if they wanted one, I just handed them a sapling with good roots as they rushed by. That tactic worked a few times until a man took one and said, “Is this the tree that drops those annoying balls — the ones that hurt when you step on them?” I can not tell a lie.

“Yes,” I said with a big smile. “Stepping on those balls really reminds you how great it is to be alive, doesn’t it? Good luck planting your tree.”

He grimaced, set the rooty twig back down on my table and stormed away.

At the end of the day, our volunteers had distributed over 3,000 free trees. Of those, I had given out a mere 25 sweetgum saplings. The experience made me feel like a failure. “Do you mind taking the leftover sweetgum trees to your house and keeping them alive until our April recycling event?” our lead volunteer asked me after everyone left on Saturday. “You can give them to folks who come to recycle that day.” I put them in my car and headed home. Yes, I will keep them alive, but someone else is going to have to push them off on people in April. I can’t handle the disappointment.