By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Did you know there are more Monterey pines in Cambria than in Monterey?  Pinus radiata is an ancient forest tree that used to blanket the West coast, certified arborist Blair McCormick of McCormick Tree, told me recently. And Cambria has the largest remaining stand.  Monterey has the second largest.  There are three others, all smaller.

Monterey pine is a weed of a tree, says McCormick.  It grows very tall, very fast.  It also is shallow rooted, making it susceptible to wind.  The roots of Pinus radiata graft together in uninterrupted forest, and the trees hold each other up in storms, says McCormick.  When you start putting residences in the middle of forest, though, you create wind corridors that make the trees more vulnerable. 

Pinus radiata is also subject to a number of diseases, including pitch canker.  So, all in all, Monterey pine tends to be short-lived.  But Cambrians, who love their native pine despite or maybe even because of its faults, seem okay with this.  In fact I'm not sure you can call yourself a native until you have the stump of a dead pine in your yard.  Cambrians don't always stop there, though.

Julia and Monty Rice, whose front yard was featured in Monday's post, built a tree house around their dead pine.  The grape vines they planted below will eventually cover the trunk.

You can also use the stump as a pedestal for a piece of garden art, of course.  But local craftsman Richard Lee took it a step further.  He cut a thick slice from one dead tree, painted it in cheerful colors, and attached it to the stump of another to create a tabletop.  The fanciful birdhouse displayed on the table, as well as the ornaments on the fence behind it, are more examples of Lee's fanciful woodwork.  Lee used more slices from the downed tree for pavers.

You can also turn that dead tree into mulch, as artist Jackie Mathews did with some of the trees that died in her forest retreat.

Or you can turn them into sculpture.  Just by having the tops carved into points, Jackie Mathews made her dead tree trunks look like Brobdingnagian-sized pencils.  The piece on the right, on the other hand, another creation of Richard Lee, is rather totem-like.  He sliced a trunk up into big cubes, stacked them up on top of each other deliberately askew, embellished each cube with painted scraps of wood, and added a metal rooster sculpture done by another artist on top.

Then there are these elfin chairs that seem to pop up overnight in yards throughout Cambria.  They've been a bit of a mystery for some time now.  No one knew, or they weren't telling, who was carving them.  But the local press have spilled the beans so I will, too, though it's tempting to leave the impression they've been happening by magic.  Blair McCormick is the responsible party. 

It's a romantic notion, I suppose," McCormick says about what has become his calling card.  "But I like to remind people there was a tree here."

Blair McCormick, McCormick Tree, 805/927-1749