"If it sounds too good to be true...."

For weeks I had been lying to myself. Well, not really. I know better. After all, how many times have I heard that saying, "If it sounds or looks too good to be true" ... you know the rest.

I hadn't really spoken words to myself, though I have to confess I sometimes mutter phrases aloud. It really helps to bolster the ego, you know, when you're trying to solve a problem and you need some self-reinforcement. Ever been there?

Frankly I was on pretty solid ground as I surveyed an annual problem that occurs during the waning weeks of autumn. Things were really looking up. Things were different this year. I could sense it, which bolstered my self-confidence and the assurance things were really okie-dokie.

However, refer to that "too good" saying. It was a week or so before Christmas that doubt began infiltrating my thought process. There was a change in the atmosphere. Perhaps it was the warmth of late fall autumn days that had lulled me into a trance of serenity. It was two two-degree mornings that spoiled my dream.

Let me stop and catch a breath. Let me ask you, gentle reader, Have you ever experienced an occurrence that was totally foreign to what you had expected?

Did that cake you put in the oven come out sunken and hard, more solid than a pan of brownies and not the fluffy German chocolate mousse-like creation you expected?

Or, dad, how about the time you began the simple task of fixing a leaky faucet, only to find the package of mixed washers in the tool box contained every type of washer except the special one you needed? And, to top that, you had stripped the threads on the screw that held the faucet handle in place?

That's the way I felt when I wandered out in the back yard a few days before Christmas, rake in hand, to pile up leaves that, thanks to those near zero days, had finally fallen off the trees. There were baskets full of the still-colorful leaves, almost a week late from a normal autumn.

As I swept up the several layers of leaves, it became obvious -- make that very obvious -- there was more than leaves to be raked.

Have you guessed it? If you've read my cuff for several years you'll know it's my annual fight against a certain fruit of the season: Sweet gum balls!

Bear with me for a few more sentences as I regroup my brain cells to realize my observations during the summer and fall were way off-base. Looking up through the branches covered with heavy foliage, I had observed very few of the pesky balls. Too good to be true, I thought aloud as I struggled to keep thousands of sweet gum balls from clogging the tines of the leaf rake.

There ... I've confessed my falsely-based anticipation of easily raking only leaves this year -- make that last year. What a way to begin this new year.

If my crop of sweet gum balls this year isn't the biggest in history, it must rank right up there with the number of rocks that I harvest from my garden every year. Because now, as I glance up through the leafless branches, there they are -- thousands, maybe trillions more balls dangling down to taunt me. Sort of like the national debt that is dangling over all our heads.

All I can admit, and accept -- reluctantly -- is that Mom Nature really threw me a bountiful lot of little round spiny spheres that will be clogging the rake for several more weeks. I've run out of words, out of adjectives and phrases, to continue this diatribe, so Bon Ball Voyage and Happy New Year to all!

Epilogue: Please be advised, this is the last time -- absolutely never again -- will I write about sweet gum balls. Also please remember I often make predictions with my fingers crossed behind my back. So my well-intentioned promise is subject to that old saying, "If it sounds too good...."

Dodie Evans is the former owner and long-time editor of the Gravette News Herald. Opinions expressed are those of the author.