A block off my normal walk is a stretch of carefully maintained things I hesitate to call bushes. They are in all sorts of shapes and stand in sharp contrast to sidewalk, trees and cars. I always thought topiary was the art of shaping plants into elephants or reindeer or one’s favorite pet. But apparently that is only a subset of topiary. According to Wikipedia, “Topiary is the horticultural practice of training perennial plants by clipping the foliage and twigs of trees, shrubs and subshrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes, whether geometric or fanciful.” I suppose “fanciful” includes Rex and Fluffy. This display stretches to the corner and then down the side street. It has all sorts of geometric shapes that one struggles to find words for. There’s hardly a leaf out of place. Without the trees growing upward into the sky, one might think this is how bushes and shrubs and so forth are meant to grow, that the owner simply maintains their proclivity for angular shape. But we know that’s not true. It’s interesting, but also a tiny bit disturbing. Interesting because the plants so willingly allow this. Disturbing because someone wanted them to be something other than they naturally are. In the end, I find myself walking quickly past, looking for flowers and succulents and trees and other things.