b'The Belgian FenceYou never know what new discoveries you might bump into by mistake when you are not really looking. While filming a segment of our show at my friends home, we were introduced to her neighbor, dr. david conners, a man of great intellect and analytical skills, as his economics professorship at the local university attests. Yet what made him irresistible was his enthusiasm as he started to speak about his Belgian fence, a challenge he undertook over a yearlong period just for the fun of it.You may be asking, What is a Belgian fence? its a type of espalier, which is an aesthetically pleasing row of artistically trained and pruned designer treeseach with a limited number of well-placed branchesthat are intended to grow in only two dimensions, for instance along a conventional fence or property line. in a Belgian fence, each tree resembles the printed letter Y, and the trees are spaced close together so that the diagonal branches overlap from one tree to the next such that they form beautiful diamond-shaped patterns. typically, the branches are grafted onto the trees trunk, but my friends neighbor trained his apple trees to grow that waya feat that requires not only more time but plenty of patience.the fact that dr. conners deployed all of his analytical skills in a scientific sequence of trial and error that ultimately yielded the perfect result is not really the most impressive part of this story; rather, what i found impressive was his relentless determination and dedication of his intellect to the creation of something of unique beauty, made of plants and edible fruit, just to see if he could do it. i love to see this kind of passion in people!130'