
Redwoods give new meaning to stumperies. Their stumps are massive, and remain intact for decades. After all, coastal redwoods are among the largest trees in the world, and their wood is famously resistant to decay. Although redwoods had been harvested here for a very long time, most were harvested soon after 1906 to rebuild San Francisco after the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire. The stumps of some of them were subsequently hollowed by forest fire in the 1950s. An outhouse at home was built on top of one such hollow stump. A showers was built within another. A third is big enough to be built into a guest cabin. Stumps at work are not so useful, so remain only as monolithic garden sculpture. One short stump was planted with Billbergias a few years ago. More recently, we installed a few Cymbidium orchids on one short stump and one taller stump. The taller stump is about five feet wide and about eight feet tall, so looks rather silly with a pair of relatively small orchids protruding from the top. The orchids could be happy there, though. They should fill out and become more proportionate to the stump that they inhabit.