Cycling around Leeside is one of the best ways to keep an eye on how the city is changing.

You get to admire the freshly- painted facelifts of places like North Main Street - looking well these days, notice the scaffolding on old buildings... fingers crossed it’s for housing.

And if you’re nosey like me, you can stop to squint at new planning notices - they’re planning how many houses in there?!

My daily route takes me down Barrack Street, along Sullivan’s Quay, over Nano Nagle bridge, and along Grand Parade.

Last week, I sailed with the usual bugbear thoughts going through my head. ‘€8 million on a bridge to a building site!’ ‘What is BAM doing with the old tax office site?’ ‘When is the council finally going to develop the Grand Parade Hotel?’

But something was off.

Michael Collins was still there, about to mount his bike, the open top bus was ready to ferry the latest wave of tourists, the queue for Three Fools was as long as ever. So what was missing?

Praise be - the robot trees were gone. Hallelujah!

Where once there stood an ugly clump of woody tech trying to pass as environmental progress, now there is a large swathe of plywood, like an embarrassingly mis-shaved patch, filling the gap in the benches, marking the €350,000 moss-and-electronics experiment.

The robot trees were moss-filled wooden towers meant to absorb air pollutants, monitor the surrounding air quality, and display real-time air........

© Evening Echo