Burls

Apart from alcoholic beverages, refrigerator magnets and pictures we don’t normally bring back much else from from our vacations.  This time we brought back something quite unique.

Those things that look like slabs of meat are redwood burls. 

They were soaked overnight in water and  placed in a quarter inch of water.  They immediately put out little green buds that under the right conditions would grow into giant redwoods. (if you look carefully you can see them.) Here they will sprout little spindly trees that will grow as long as the burl is  kept wet.  I’ll take a picture in the future if things get interesting.  I’m going to decorate the shallow bowl we have them in with some of the glass and pebbles from Glass Beach and some smooth flat pacific shore rocks that I got at Point Mugu many years ago.

Oh, we didn’t take these burls illegally. They are sold in gift shops in very moist plastic bags.  We got ours at the botanical gardens.  They had some growing there that were about 2 feet tall.