keep in mind we use this story with 6 to 8 year olds. There once was a boy named Sassafras who fell madly in love with a girl. But the girl didn't love him back. So he went to the medicine man and said "oh medicine man please help me get this girl to notice me" and the medicine man gives him a potion and says "drink this when you go to bed and when you wake up you will have something so special that she will have to notice you." So sassafras takes the potion and goes to bed and when he wakes up he has a second thumb growing out of the other side of his hand (everyone put one hand on top of the other so it looks like you have two thumbs. note also in asl this is the sign for sea turtle) and sassafras looked at his hands and thought wow this is really cool I bet she will love me now! So he went out into the village, but instead of being amazed all the villagers laughed at him (go ahead and laugh too!) And even the girl he loved laughed. So he went back to the medicine man and said "oh medicine man please help me get this girl to notice me" and the medicine man gives him a potion and says "drink this when you go to bed and when you wake up you will have something so special that she will have to notice you." So sassafras takes the potion and goes to bed and when he wakes up he has a no thumbs.(everyone tuck your thumb under so it looks like you don't have any) and sassafras looked at his hands and thought wow this is really cool I bet she will love me now! So he went out into the village, but instead of being amazed all the villagers laughed at him (go ahead and laugh too!) And even the girl he loved laughed. So he went back to the medicine man and said "oh medicine man please help me none of your potions have worked." And the medicine man says " I'm sorry sassafras I don't have anything else for you."and so sassafras goes off into the forest and cries beneath the trees and he dies of a broken heart. A few days later the villagers say "hey where's sassafras I haven't seen him in a while?" So they go into the woods to look for him but they can't find him anywhere. Finally they give up and they look at the trees above them. And there in the middle of the forest is a little sapling (a sapling is a baby tree) and it has three kinds of leaves, it has leaves with one thumb (look at your hand and do the motions with me as I say them) leaves with two thumbs, and leaves with no thumbs. And the villagers all exclaimed "there that's what happened to sassafras" and the girl sassafras loved took care of the sapling until it grew as big and tall as the other trees in the forest. So that's a fun way to remember how to spot a sassafras tree. And remember the moral of the story is don't laugh at people or they just might turn into trees! (Kids usually laugh at the end and then they each get to pick one leaf to put in there camp journals and we take turns watering the tree.)

The sun is wonderful, Jim, isn't it! We're probably a couple of weeks ahead of you into fall here. Thank you, ramblinrose, for the nice compliment! I was just feeling dreamy. I have festoons of spider web everywhere too. Makes it look very Halloweeny though! Mike, after all that cold, dreary, wet weather it feels like Indian Summer. I hope you're right about those buds but I'm not holding my breath. I have to get out to see your new place! It sounds like you've already done a ton of work. Turkey vultures? I don't think I've ever seen any of those around here. Must be inland birds. We get huge cormorants sometimes that might as well be vultures. They drive out most of the other birds. Glad to hear you got some welcome rain, Jackie. I'll bet the roses loved it too! Black Walnuts? My Aunt has some and they are a pain! Besides the fact that their roots are toxic and other thing won't grow with them they drop those huge green spikey nuts and when they drop their leaves they drop them in whole branches not just the leaves. No thanks, I'll keep our colorful maples. Our city doesn't clean leaves anymore but that's OK because I want all of mine to winter protect my potted roses. We had two huge elms here that we lost in the 70's too, Mike. As a matter of fact that's how my Aunt ended up with those black walnuts. But Mom was smart and planted different varieties to replace them (and none of them were ash) so she wouldn't lose them all again like that. I have two very different varieties of maples and two different apples and they're all huge now! Marianne, try burning bush (vibernum?) for some fall color. And one my friend just got that changes color several times a year is called coppertina. I don't know what's available in Sweden but there are some lovely Japanese maples that are red all year long too.

I appreciate this discussion, thank you for all your comments. I thought I was alone with a mystery problem. Getting rid of these sassafrass suckers or seedlings has been impossible. The roots are too deep in established beds to dig out. The later comment about an established sassafrass tree dying might be a clue as to what's going on over here. There was a really big Norway maple on the neighbor's property that they took down about 12 years ago. That's allowed a little Norway maple to flourish on our property to create a lot of shade. Also a lot of Sassafrass trees popped up on the neighbor's property, and we let one grow on our property. Ever since then the suckers come up everywhere and don't stop no matter how we slice and dice and pull out as much as we can. The little ones are sprouting up ALL OVER, by the dozens, and we've dug down 2 feet in the places where we can and we still don't get the whole root out. Use caution with sassafrass. It may be native but there are some natives that become invasive pests, and sassafrass seems to be one, along with some rudbeckia and a few others. I agree about the maples, especially if it's a Norway Maple, which are an invasive non-native. I've seen some maples here on Long Island, I think they're called swamp maples, they appear to share space with other plantings more peacefully than Norway Maples. I would never have considered round up but some compelling points are made above. Makes me wonder if the salt, vinegar and soap I spray on poison ivy leaves would work on the sassafrass suckers.. Peace and happy gardening.

Ach! Vee, some people seem to be looking for something -- anything -- to get incensed about. I don't remember lice being a problem when I was a child in Iowa, and I was lucky that I never got lice in my travels, but when my older son was about seven years old, he managed to pick them up at school. When I was notified by the school nurse, I was mortified, but she waved it off as such a common occurrence that it was no more shameful than a kid getting a cold. She told me matter-of-factly what to do. However, when I told my mother, she said she was hanging up the phone and she would be right over. In typical Hausfrau fashion, she directed an all-fronts attack: DH shaved son #1's head and dunked him in a bath of "Rid' while mother and I threw out all son's possessions that couldn't be cleaned and we washed all his bedding and clothes in hot water and dried them on high heat. We even hauled away his mattress set. When I triumphantly told the school nurse what we had done, she only said, "You didn't have to go to that much trouble." Nevertheless, for several weeks after, I think all of us were sure we had lice every time we had an itch. Dear son learned the lesson to not share combs or anything else that touched his hair or head -- we think he got the lice from sharing headphones. Carolyn, hee! I did the same thing -- the first time I shaved my legs I used my daddy's razor with one of those single-sided blades. I managed to take off as much skin as I did hair and I had to plaster Band-Aids on my ankles, shins, and knees. Mama, who had told me that she thought I could probably go without shaving my legs indefinitely because my leg hair was blonde peach fuzz, just shook her head in resignation. It's funny: I swear that my leg hair did get thicker and darker after I started shaving. But when I lived in Europe I stopped shaving because European women didn't usually shave back then and the hair reverted to its previous softness and was hardly visible except in bright sunlight. When I moved back to the U.S., I took up shaving again, bowing to peer pressure I suppose.