My best friend in high school had a tree that dropped nuts over her room. We used to lie awake and listen to them. I have ash seedlings in my pots. How many pots of impatiens became small ash tree giveaways I cannot count. The only thing on my roof at present are rambunctious raccoons.

I can understand your irritation, but personally I love acorns. We're creating our garden in a former pasture of thin grass growing in gray clay, and never a tree seedling in sight. When I begin finding them and pulling them up, it's a sign that the soil has improved to a point that trees can get going. I have zones I want to become tree belts, for summer shade, to block wind, and to drop leaves for mulch. Oaks are the best of our native trees, and I'm so happy when I find a baby with its two leaves, at least when it's in the right place. The ones in the beds I pull, but always with regret.
Melissa

I pull most oak seedlings but I always apologize first! It seems like heresy to pull a plant that has the potential to be 1000 years old and that used be a royal tree, to be saved for building ships. But there must be hundreds of saplings that I will not spot as they grow everywhere in my woodland. Our seven trees are not old and magnificent but at least 40 years old as they don't flower before that age. Now they are making up for lost time. Luckily the red squirrels eat a lot of acorns.

Well, maybe raccoons are worse than acorns. I wish I could send you some potted oaks, Melissa. We don't have ash trees here thank heavens, but our oaks are huge and old and scattered all over our acreage. Unfortunately, the squirrels can't begin to make a dent in the acorns this year. They are so thick on the ground, you can't walk barefooted, and if you step wrong on them when wearing shoes, they will roll and dump you on your fanny. They are the biggest acorns I have seen.

The oaks are lovely, and they are my favorite tree. Probably when I can sleep again they will still be my favorite tree.

You could advertise in a 'free' newspaper for somebody who is looking to make a gluten-free flour from acorns.

floridarose, I feel your pain but your description was so humorous. I'm quite sure I wouldn't see the humor after a few of those sleepless nights. Would you consider upholstering the tin areas in bubble wrap until this is all over?

Ingrid

I don't face the endless clunking of acorns, but every spring I pull up jillions of unwanted sycamore maple seedlings. Talk about an invasive alien species!

So this is a cyclical thing, huh? Thankfully, I don't have a tin roof, but the acorns are as thick as mulch. For that reason I haven't minded them too much, but then I kinda think fearfully about all the seedlings I'll be yanking. I have enough trees - all oaks, about 15 of them on .17 acre. I know you're wondering how I grow roses with that many trees. Twelve of them are along our back property line, and since that's the north side, all the shade goes straight down or the other way. Sorry about your noisy tin roofs, but I'm sure they're beautiful.

Sherry

Here is a link that might be useful: If only sweat were irrigation...

Ann, that would be an excellent idea if only the entire state wasn't covered in them. Everyone has more than they need.

Sherry, yes, it's cyclical, thank god, and apparently this is the most prolific cycle in quite some time.

Ingrid, at this point, bubble wrap is sounding really good. About the time I think it's easing off, then another species of oak kicks in and starts dropping their acorns. Our home is surrounded by huge oaks of diffierent species, so I'm not sure when this will be over.

It seems we gardeners are an embattled species. If it's not acorns, it's gophers or ash trees or sycamores trees or moles. That's not mentioning all the weeds we do battle with.

I remember one year perhaps in the 1980's, on Long Island, we used snow shovels to pick up all the acorns.
Here in WA acorns dont exist in my yard. I kind of miss them. Here we pull out oodles of Doug Fir seedlings about as long as my thumb.
Mother nature sure has plans.
Jeannie

What kind of Oak do you have floridarosez? What kind of Oak do you have Melissa in Italy?

Here in the neighborhood there are a few remaining CA native oaks. It's a race to get the acorns, because just about every native creature eats them. A seedling is rare, too.

Here the trash-palms and the trash-ash reseed like crazy. I'm always pulling up seedlings from the neighbor's trees.

Jeannie, you could use a shovel here also. Hoovb, to name just a few, we have Live Oak, Water Oak, White Oak, Turkey Oak, but the ones falling on the tin roof seem to be only water oak and live oak. Our land goes from creek bank and swamp to sand hills, so we have many different varieties.

My sister lives down the road and also has a porch with a tin roof. When the acorns were at their worst, we would crack up every time we tried to talk on the phone because it sounded like we were in a firefight in Iraq instead of the woods of central Florida. I kid you not, it sounded just like machinegun fire, in stereo no less because I could hear them falling on her roof and my roof at the same time.

Ann got me thinking when she suggested using them for gluten-free flour. They are so huge and shiny they look like beautiful two-tone wooden beads. Maybe I could market them for jewelry making--ya think?

We get lots of seedlings of coastal live oaks here every year. I'd love to have some growing on a steep slope outside the fence, but unfortunately the deer or the gophers will probably eat them. I did plant a few out there on the off chance that they would be overlooked.

Our native oaks are all deciduous, robust, slow-growing, more or less long-lived species, rather similar to one another. The most common is 'roverella', Q. pubescens; there's the 'cerro', Q. cerris; and we probably have 'farnia', Q. pedunculata. I've never gotten good at distinguishing them except for Q. cerris. I don't know whether they interbreed either. Q. ilex, holm oak, isn't native here but is hardy. This is one of the two Italian evergreen oaks I know of; the other is the cork oak.
Florida's my home state and it does have magnificent oaks, and lots of them. For sheer grandeur, with a touch of the bizarre, the only rival to a mature live oak that I know is the Atlas cedar.
hoovb, what are your trash palms? The only tree palms hardy enough to grow easily here are Trachycarpus and probably Chaemerops humilis (the native Mediterranean palm). Trachycarpus is a prolific seeder and a lot of progressive Italian gardeners look down on it. Personally I'm a fan. I grew up with wild palms, and I like them.
Melissa

you could try phoenix canariensis or butia capitata (I think - Jelly Palm) - the phoenix has been a hardy survivor in the UK as long as the drainage is good and you can plant a big one.

Thanks, Suzy. I made a mistake in my cedars--I meant the Cedar of Lebanon, not the Atlas Cedar, although it too is a splendid tree.
Melissa

Thanks for that list of local oaks in your areas, florida and melissa. Quercus suber, I have a hankering for one of those.

The trash-palm here is Washingtonia filifera, native to the Colorado river area of California, but not to this area, and an aggressive reseeder. The bigger problem is they are highly flammable, and burning embers from them will float for miles and start new fires in fire season. And rats love to nest in them. And they are expensive to prune. And the neighbor has a bunch of them, full of rats, unpruned, and dropping seedlings all over my yard. Phoenix canariensis is also an invasive palm here, but it is a pretty thing when well-grown.