(Morningside Drive, New York, May 2013) Are they political? Private-public hybrids, these flowering trees and garden flowers are part of the city fabric. Cultivated with great care by members of  a local “co-op,” they are set out alongside the public sidewalk in large, open concrete container plots. They are colorful, proud and bourgeois. Unprotected by a gate or barrier, they would not exist without private initiative. I always wonder that they are left unpicked, unmolested by the general public.