Barcham Trees is offering tree professionals a CD of presentations for those unable attend the opportunity to attend its series of seminars.

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Midland native Arlen Fisher likens himself to a doctor. But unlike a medical doctor, Fisher's patients are trees, and they can't tell him what's ailing them.

The tree doctor - or more specifically, a certified consulting arborist - diagnoses sick trees and decides on a course of treatment. With 6,500 regular clients in Midland and a recent move to San Angelo to expand his business here, there doesn't seem to be a shortage of sick trees.

"The biggest thing is weed killer - to try to save a tree that's ingested weed killer," Fisher said.

Fisher said many of the team's treatments are done in their own yards on what they call their test trees.

"You get to find out exactly which trees respond to what," he said. "We've found pretty much the magic cure."
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An advertisement for a brand of chainsaws that makes light of a deathbed scene has drawn criticism for being insensitive and offensive.

While it has upset a few viewers, the ad's makers say it was never intended to offend.

In the commercial, as a grieving family gathers around a dying patriarch, the old man issues a final instruction to his favourite son: "Look after your mother."

It is a touching, poignant moment, and an opportunity for a selfish son: "He said I can have his chainsaw."

It is humour of the blackest kind, but a conservative media standards watchdog says the ad, for chainsaw manufacturer Stihl, has crossed a line.

"I was really horrified," says Adrian Cooper of Media Matters in NZ. "I thought, this is not good enough. It's simply not good enough, and it's not the New Zealand I know."

The ad prompted a flurry of complaints to the Broadcasting and Advertising Standards authorities.

"I think that any mature, responsible, thinking adults looking at that would find it offensive," says Mr Cooper.

The chainsaw company has also been on the receiving end.

"We have had four or five people since Sunday night, when the ad first went to air, contact us and say, 'Do you really think that's in good taste?'" says Jim Bibby of Stihl.

So far the ad makers have resisted the urge to tell their critics to get a life.

"It's a shame, it's a pity some people feel that way," says Toby Talbot of DDB NZ. "I think, generally speaking, a lot of people see it for what it is - it is actually quite a light-hearted ad."

Whether any guidelines have been breached will be decided by the Advertising Standards Authority, but for now, the ad lives to play another day.