The Harold Gassner Memorial Redwood Garden, originally uploaded by byjane73.

Harold Gassner–my dad–was a nature boy born in Brooklyn. He loved the outdoors and claimed there was more of interest to see in a square inch of earth than in all the great cities of Europe. I spend many a day with him in the woods in all sorts of places: Cook’s Forest, PA; Sherwood Forest, UK; Muir Woods, CA. He was astonished at the redwoods there and brought back some carefully gathered seeds (okay, he was also a bit of a klepto and you never wanted to leave him alone in a drs. office for all the tongue depressers that he’d make off with). He brought those redwood seeds back to our house in Gibsonia and planted them carefully, there by the blueberry bushes he had such fond hopes for. My mother and I hooted. The blueberry bushes had withered; what made him think he could grow a redwood tree? And how old would we all be before it was even a sapling?

In Mendocino last week, I saw this redwood burl, or another one like it, which was actually sprouting tendrils. I knew I had to have one, for my father, because he would have had one and grown another redwood tree. So that’s what I’m doing. In his memory.

I miss you, Harold darling, but you are forever in my heart.