First frost
Result of needle plucking sessions: in spite of my good intentions I managed to pluck only eight out of my ten pines. I finished the eighth on Saturday, but there has been more than a zillion things to do, of which half is still undone, and I doubt I'll be able to finish the last two. The first really cold days are here, there are several minus degrees in the night and it barely rises to +1-2° in the daytime. Perhaps a bit unusually cold for the season, and there might be a month of warmer days after this cold spell, but still, two of the pines might be left until spring. That is what I usually have done, plucked the needles in the spring, but there is always so many other tasks on the agenda in the spring that having the trees finished in autumn would have been a relief. An additional bonus of plucking the needles in the autumn is that because you get a so much clearer picture of the trunk and branches of the tree, you have more to ponder over during the dark winter months, a good time for making plans for future wiring and perhaps other measures too.