Straight Lines

There are many straight lines near my apartment. Here are two of them.

This is the small canal the runs by my apartment building. The wall in the foreground is part of the entrance and that in the background is the actual wall of one of the first floor apartments. Less than 30 years ago this entire area was rice paddies, and the farmer's cooperatives built canals all over the town to supply the water that is necessary for flooding the paddies in the spring. They vary greatly in size and many of them have been covered over so that they are more like sewers than canals but they are still carrying water. You can see that there is a guard rail separating the canal from the road but in many places there is nothing between the road and the water. This makes me glad that I do not drive a car, my license having expired in about 1980.

 Here is another straight line. It is composed of trees. Most of the main streets in town are lined with trees. In this picture you can see the gardeners trimming this year's branches and cutting off most of the leaves. They say that this is done to keep the roots short so that they do not damage the sidewalk or the street. The roots are supposed to spread so that they cover the same area as the branches, so short branches, short roots. Removing the leaves helps keep down the overall growth.