Trees make news, or do they?

From Treehugger

These days, trees seem to make news. And ironically speaking, they make the newspapers too.

Trees soothe, trees bind soil, trees clean the air. Bear fruit, bear shade, bear no grudge.

Bear with the lot of us.

But today I discovered one more thing about our sylvan friends.

I was sitting in my car, taking in the meandering traffic line, desperately trying to make song and dance of the old Art of Living punchline: Accept the situation, dum di dum...

Time passed and the traffic crawled along, while the tooting horns got louder as collective patience was dying down. It normally flowed faster than this on this road, and yet today, something was clearly blocking the line.

I looked around, and saw a motley line of cars, scooters, and a large bus which stood alongside, quite as helpless as the rest of the smaller vehicles. I still couldn't see the reason for the traffic block.

I inched a few meters ahead and that was when I saw this old, battered truck that stood bang in the middle of the lane. Ah, so that was the culprit, I thought to myself. One stupid truck that got stuck, slowing half the world's wheeled population, I thought, with a frown.

The choicest curse words were doing the cha-cha-cha in the ol' mind, threatening to create sound-bytes, when I happened to inadvertently get a closer look at the truck.

That was when I saw a tiny tree branch, stuck on one side of the truck. The truck stood still, but the branch was swaying merrily in the wind.

A corny looking truck, the butt of everyone's ridicule, taking in all the collective curses of drivers, strangely took on a bovine stance on a busy road. With a piece of green stuck clumsily on one side.

I could almost picture tomorrow's headlines: 'A bunch of leaves lend luster to a lopsided lorry.'

I couldn't stop giggling.