Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/849592
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 16 JULY 2017 24 Opinion F unny things, trees. They can just sit there for centuries, without ever uttering so much as a whisper... but then, a carob and an orange tree somehow strike up a conversation; and they just don't stop nattering away for days on end. A little like small children, I suppose. You spend your first year as a parent eagerly anticipating that all-important 'first word ' (which I imagine would now have to be 'Parent!' instead of the traditional 'Mama!' or 'Papa!')... and around the next 18 wishing they'd just shut the hell up. Well, I'm beginning to feel the same way about those two arboreal chatterboxes. OK, initially it was fun to read news reports about 'what the carob said to the orange tree'... but, dang it, you now can't even access the Internet without being instantly f looded with more (and more, and MORE) snippets of that conversation. And besides: at first it was just a carob and an orange tree. Now it's branching out to cover the full spectrum of Maltese arboreal f lora, too: olives, almonds, pines, oleanders... name the tree, and you'll find it talking the roots off a tamarisk somewhere. And they're mostly just gossiping, too. The last update I saw concerned what a lemon tree remarked to a cypress about the size of a certain Znuber's 'zokk ', for instance. Or how that fig-tree's bark is worse than its ' bajtar'... It's all getting out of hand. I think we may need a root and branch reform of the entire situation. Not, mind you, that I begrudge any tree, plant, shrub or fungus the faculty of speech. Oh, no: trees have as much right as the rest of us to shoot their... um... whatever-they-talk-with off as much as they like. And about any subject they choose, too. I'm just a little disappointed that they can't seem to find anything worthwhile to actually say with this newfound gift of theirs. I mean, take that tweet which started this whole cacophony of tree-speech to begin with. Is it possible that the only thing a carob and an orange tree would strike up a conversation about was a minor legislative amendment concerning marriage equality among humans? If trees really could talk, surely there'd be more pressing things for them to discuss right now. The orange tree would probably have a thing or two to say about the uncontrolled use of pesticides in Maltese agriculture, for instance. As for the carob, my hunch is that it would complain about always being uprooted to make way for development... even if it is supposedly a 'protected species' at law. And that's just as far as those two varieties are concerned. Given half a chance, I'm fairly certain Maltese palm trees would have a lot to complain about, too: like being periodically dismembered, so that their precious leaves can be used as props during the annual Palm Sunday celebrations. (I bet Archbishop Scicluna never thought about that, when choosing 'trees' as vehicles for his own opinions). And ALL Malta's trees would almost certainly have strong opinions about the way they are generally treated here... that is to say, as public nuisances to be felled and removed wherever Raphael Vassallo Orange you glad you're not a carob? Is it possible that the only thing a carob and an orange tree would strike up a conversation about was a minor legislative amendment concerning marriage equality among humans?