Only enough energy to pick up pine cones in the back yard, and watch basketball.

But there were quite a few cones of the the red pine, Pinus resinosa. These cones drop their seeds beginning in the fall of their second year on the tree, and the cones themselves drop off the following spring. I forgot to count, so have to estimate, that the pickup amounted to 50 cones. Also down on the ground were the tips of many red pine twigs, presumably cut by squirrels, for some reason. Is it to eat the buds? I know that the little pine squirrels on Manitoulin cut and drop cedar and spruce cones in late summer and fall, but when they do it it's because seeds are in the cones.

The red pine is a conifer, and thus a gymnosperm, and thus quite bit more ancient than an angiosperm like the crabapple or oak.