There are a half dozen trees growing out of the metal grate in the buffer space protecting the 4th Avenue bike lane downtown across the street from Westlake Park. I noticed them while biking home Wednesday evening, and I had to stop.

They are the same kind of tree as whatever is growing on the sidewalk next to the grate (perhaps a tree person can tell me what it is in the comments below?), and they seem to be growing from a ledge that is maybe a foot or so below street level. Who knew the downtown street grime was such fertile soil?

But what I really love about these little doomed trees is that they are all in a perfect line inside the buffer space protecting the bike lane. It’s an adorable little metaphor about what’s possible when we reimagine our city space and remove cars from even a couple feet of it. Nobody would have expected this to happen, I’m sure. But as the renown chaos theory mathematician Ian Malcolm once said, “Life finds a way.” That is, so long as there is not a constant stream of cars mowing it down.