The plan arrived in December: a wider road, new pavements, and a bus stop where the plane tree stands. The tree is about two hundred years old. Nobody in the neighbourhood knows this for certain, but everybody repeats it, and the number grows slightly every year. We collected signatures. We got four hundred and eleven, which is more than the number of people who actually live on the street, so some of them must have been enthusiastic relatives. At the meeting, the engineer was patient with us. He explained that the road had to be widened because two buses could not pass, that the plan had been approved, and that a tree is not a legal obstacle. Then a woman at the back asked what would happen to the water. The engineer asked what she meant. She said that the corner floods every March, that it had flooded every March since she was a girl, and that it had stopped flooding about the time the tree grew large. He wrote something down. Two weeks later a hydrologist came and stood by the tree for an hour with a tablet. The plan was changed in April. The road curves now, very slightly, and there is a small awkward island in the middle of it with a plane tree on it. The bus stop was moved eleven metres. Nobody has complained about the walk.