Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe NEW YORK, May 17 (UPI) -- An elderly New York woman was threatened with arrest for objecting to a tree being planted in front of her Brooklyn home, her friend says. Widow Marion Smith, 79, asked city workers to not plant a tree in front her home because she was disabled and wouldn't be able to rake the leaves. In fact, she had had the spot paved over five years earlier when a tree that used to be there died, The New York Post reported Sunday. Advertisement But when city workers came to break the pavement and plant a new tree as part of the city's Million Trees program, her friend and neighbor, Nancy Cardozo, took up her cause, asking the work crew to stop, the newspaper said. When they wouldn't, Cardozo was put on the phone was city forestry department official who allegedly threatened them with jail. The newspaper said the new tree was a ginkgo, the females of which require the clean-up of fallen fruit whose smell has been compared to vomit and rancid butter. "We're hoping it's not a female," Cardozo said.
