Off the sidewalk just behind where I live is a strip of dirt a few feet wide in front of an old wooden fence. In late summer the gardener or handyman for the building cleared all the weeds that had cluttered the space. All but three or four bumps of thick foliage near the top of the strip. Maybe he liked them. They were lush and green and rounded. Four months later they are four or five feet tall and just as lush except for the tallest one. It towers over a six foot fence and has begun at last to decay. It has a trunk, if weeds have trunks, that would require two hands to reach around. I theorize, with no evidence whatsoever, that it found a leak in a water main, possibly a sewer pipe, allowing it to grow to this enormous size. Only yesterday did I notice the browning of these leaves. Has it reached its limits? Will the man who takes care of this strip of land now hack it down? Does he have equipment for anything this large? Or are we all going to die of radiation poisoning? I see the size and I see the browning and I worry. Something seems very wrong.