Gardening is one of my favourite hobbies, so after shifting all the things I began my search for new plants for the garden. Soon my garden was filled with all sorts of flower plants, but I failed to get hold of tree saplings. Even my visit, to a nearby nursery proved futile as they had all sorts of flower plants but no tree saplings.

One fine day, I was on my usual visit to the market when I found a man sitting at the corner of the road with some saplings. My joy knew no bounds and I almost ran to him. On reaching him I saw that he had different varieties of tree saplings especially fruit saplings like mango, jack fruit, and others. But the one that caught my attention was the apple tree sapling.

I had never seen an apple tree in my life and the thought of having a apple tree in my garden was exciting. The man said all the plants were of very good variety and that they would all yield very good fruits. I was very happy and purchased five saplings. The apple tree sapling was priced at Rs 100 while the rest of them were for Rs 75. In all that excitement I did not even want to bargain and rushed back home with the saplings.

On reaching home I displayed my new found saplings to everybody at home. At first sight itself my Mom said that none of the saplings were of good variety. I was quite disappointed but decided to go forward and plant them. I planted the apple tree right in front of my house. I took great care of all the saplings, nurtured them, put lots of water and did everything possible to make them grow.

But all my hard work proved futile as none of the saplings would grow and after a few months all the saplings except for the apple tree dried up. I put all my hopes on the apple tree and waited for it to bloom. It's nearly five years now and the plant has just grown to about metres in height. Just last month one of my uncles who paid me a visit turned down all my hopes saying that the plant was not an apple tree. He also said that he had an apple tree in his garden and the next time when he would paid me a visit, he would get a sapling for me.

Well, I was nearly in tears when I heard that. All my hard work had proved futile and my hopes were shattered. So I have decided not to cut the fake apple tree and let it remain as a reminder for the trick the plant vendor had played on me.