This is a normal scene for us at this time of year. Seed "helicopter" from our Sugar Maple burst to life where ever they hit open earth. In this particular case, it was in the planter box on our deck; before I had planted new Marigolds for the 2016 season. 2017, however, hasn't been a normal year. After the Maple Trees flowered, we had a long stretch of several days with 24 hour hard freezes. That resulted in all of the helicopter seed pods being killed off. There will be no seed maples this year. Nor a Spring...We have gone directly from a prolonged Winter (with sub freezing temperatures) into an early Summe(with record highs in the 90's & 70% oppressive humidity). This photo is a memory of a more normal Spring.

UPDATE 2019: The photo was from 2016 and the above comment was from the Spring of 2017. The weather was even worse in 2018 with early 90 degree days mixed with several late hard freezes... This year 2019, Winter just hung on through most of April. No really warm days to encourage the trees to flower before the hard freezes were over. Spring came very late. However, the maple trees flowered more profusely this year than I've ever seen before. Those flowers produced so many seedpods that the late April/early May trees were totally covered in gold; not green: https://pbase.com/britestar/image/169152288 Those seedpods are finally just starting to fall from the trees. For the most part, leaves on the trees still have not yet developed. Nature is taking her time. Meanwhile, with as much rain as we've been having, I now expect to see baby maple trees eventually popping up in all kinds of unexpected places from these seedpods.

The green in the above macro photo developed only after the dried seedpod had germinated. From that, teeny reddish maple leaves unfolded to later turn into a green leafed maple tree. From what I've read maple tree seeds germinate after wintering over. If that is true, this 2016 silver maple seedling came from the tree flowering way back in 2015. And next Spring of 2020, there may be a boom in new baby maple trees from the recent 2019 crop of seedpods.

Nature is fascinating.