STOP PRESS | They are 'widow maker's' so you really don't want a home among them

The song goes 'A sheep or two, a k-kangaroo, a clothesline out the back, verandah out the front and an old rocking chair...'

Sounds all very lovely but big gum trees have a nasty habit of falling over or dropping heavy branches to save water in droughts, earning them the ominous nickname 'widow maker's' so you really don't want a home among them.

But more concern is along our streets and roads that are lined with overhanging gum trees that can fall over or drop big branches that can land on your car and do lots of damage.

In NSW seven people including young kids have been killed by falling trees in the past few months raising concerns about tree management policies adopted by councils across the state.

So far they haven't fallen on a car in Orange but that's possible the way they've been swaying in the wild winds we've been getting with more predicted through September.

A huge eucalyptus that crashed on Pinnacle Road would have wiped out any car it landed on.

There's probably little anyone can do because you can't chop down every gum on the roadside but you can keep your fingers crossed next time you're driving through one of these gum tree avenues.

There's lots of easy money the State Government can pick up if highway patrol cops sat at roundabouts and booked drivers going straight ahead who still fail to signal left when exiting.

It's about time some of these lazy drivers were pinged so other motorists don't have to stop to see which way oncoming cars are going to go.

A quick one-minute check at the Anson St-Kite St roundabout showed six of 11 cars going straight ahead failed to click on their blinkers.

The fine is $191 and two demerit points so had a copper been there he could have collected $1,146 for 60 seconds' work.

That's an excellent return so think what could be reaped in a day.

If the same ratio of blinker law-breakers was repeated in an hour, that's $68,760 in fines. Multiply that by eight hours and you get $550,080.

That's just at one roundabout and we've got hundreds so the takings would be like winning lotto several times over.

Highway Patrol police could earn their fines quotas in minutes without leaving Orange, saving hundreds of litres of fuel not having to drive around looking for customers.

Spring has almost sprung, the grass is riz and wattle our national floral emblem is out in the Orange district right on cue for Wattle Day on Sunday.

It would have been late if Wattle Day had stayed on August 1 where it had been celebrated in NSW since1916 because that enabled the Red Cross to send the earlier flowering Cootamundra Wattle overseas during the war and give it to homecoming servicemen and women.

But wattle still represents a big part of our life, especially in sport, since green and gold officially became our national colours in April 1984 and then our national floral emblem in September 1988.

Wattle and Wattle Day can be anything we want it to be but generally relates to the beginning of spring.

Here's hoping.