We live in OK. And just recently moved and the home we bought has maple trees, variety I am unsure of. This whole housing addition is full of maple trees. Our problem is we are elderly and thought when we left the oak trees behind we would not be cleaning gutters & raking the yard constantly.
My question is: Can you prune back or use something on the trees to make them sterile where they won't produce the little red looking berrie, which I am assuming is the bloom & then the whirly things follow filling up the gutters. We need help with this.
Any suggestions? We do not want to remove the trees altogether, just get them less messy.

SLD in OK.

You can buy stuff to keep apple trees from having apples. It might work on maples too. Dig back through this category. I think a month ago, I suggested checking for something, and the person later posted the name of it. Maybe even do a search on apple.

There are some very effective gutter guards too. Gutter Helmet really does work. There are some arched expanded metal guards that work fairly well and are much cheaper.

I came across this myself, and thought I would give it to you.

http://www.montereylawngarden.com/info/florel.html