Cold and Sunny Saturday...
Today I was given an entire pickup truck load of pine needles mixed with a few oak and maple leaves by a gentleman who gave me pine needles last year. I will probably go back there at least once more this fall because he's got a huge oak tree in his next-door neighbor's yard that still has completely green leaves.
Trees are completely individualistic as to when they go into dormancy. The black walnuts generally are completely done with shedding their leaves and nuts by mid-October. My apple trees refused to even consider going into dormancy until we had a hard frost and they are still holding on to a few leaves--more for appearance's sake than anything else, I'd say.
The maples around here are a mixed bag species-wise. We have everything from native red maples and silver maples, box-elder, sycamores, sugar maples, and even the fancy nursery produced maples that were especially selected for their fall color and staying power.
You tend to see the fancy nursery maples only in the parks, college campuses, and in the landscaping around our hospitals and doctors' offices. Once you know what you're looking at, you'll start noticing them right about now because the ordinary maples are all but done shedding their leaves by mid-November whereas the fancy maples are still trying to hold onto their leaves.
Our oaks are like our maples as far as when they decide to go dormant each fall. Some, like the red oaks, have already developed their beautiful red fall color and then fallen and some other oaks, whose species I haven't yet Id'ed, are still green.
Many other plants are doing their best to make fall last as long as possible. The feral tomato vines that were lucky enough to seed themselves in sheltered spots are still growing and blooming. The little pink-flowered begonias are still blooming in their sheltered nook out front and my little tr-colored sage plant looks like it'd determined to survive another winter in that same nook. The daylilies are all still green but the caladiums are gone. I'm thinking I'll try digging a few of them up to see if their bulbs are still alive if I have time this week before our first snow arrives later this week.
Yup. SNOW is in the forecast for this week.