nature and capitalism

The trees in our local supermarket car park look lovely at this time of year, with their yellow leaves looking especially beautiful in the late afternoon sunlight. I noticed recently however that half of the trees had been cut down and mentioned this in conversation with a rather disaffected trolley-collector. He told me that the manager had decided to get rid of all the trees because of the manpower and money it took to collect all the pretty yellow leaves when they eventually fell to the ground, posing a slip hazard to shoppers and their cars. However, the felling had now stopped because the manager was finding it even more expensive (apparently) to get the wood chopped up and disposed of and now he was having to paint the area around the stumps yellow because customers kept driving on top of them and damaging their cars.

I dont know how much of this information is true, but the remaining trees looked very nice in between showers and there was an extra treat of a rainbow, too.