ARLINGTON — They moved to the country for the peace and the quiet.
Jim and Lori Dawson have lived on their five acres in the Bryant area, north of Arlington, for 21 years.
They run a custom cabinet business called The Wood Shop. For fun, he restores hot rods and she gardens. They also collect unique tree stumps to decorate their yard.
Yes, tree stumps.
The Dawsons have a half-dozen or so decorative stumps they can see from the back porch of their 1972 single-wide mobile home. Over the years, Jim Dawson has built a house around the mobile home, using reclaimed wood from a 100-year-old barn for the roof.
The Dawsons recently added to the collection a massive stump that washed up at Dagmars Marina in Everett from the Snohomish River earlier this summer.
For months, marina manager Kernan “Kerney” Manley kept the 9-by-12-foot stump out by southbound I-5, in hopes someone might see it and want to take it home.
The Dawsons borrowed a friend’s one-ton rig with a dump-truck bed. The stump wasn’t unloaded in their yard so much as dumped off the truck bed, Jim Dawson said.
The stump now is in beauty bark in front of his shop, towering over his full-size pickup.
“It fit right in,” he said.
Dawson makes furniture and metal art, too. His pieces dot the yard alongside the stumps.
He started doing cabinetry when he was 16, an after-school job.
“It’s in his blood,” Lori Dawson said. “His great-grandfather built houses in San Francisco, the ones with all the turrets.”
The Dawsons name their stumps. “The Royal Stump” has twists and turns that resemble a king’s crown. It came from a slash pile in Arlington.
“We drove by and went, ‘Hey, look at this cool stump,’” Lori Dawson said.
There’s “The Llama” and “Tractorsaurus,” too. Some of the stumps come from the firs and hemlocks they’ve cleared from the property to create a yard. A creek runs through the back.
They’ve named the massive stump from Dagmars Marina, “Da Stump.”
To her, it looks like a huge flower. From some angles, he sees a monster’s face.
“Da Stump,” must have come from a fir tree that was logged, Jim Dawson said. It had been in the water a long time.
Birds, including downy and pileated woodpeckers, frequent the property.
“The birds, I just love them,” Lori Dawson. “I can watch my birds all day long. They’re hilarious.”
The birds have been checking out the new stump, waiting for the tasty bugs to move in.
Meanwhile, the Dawsons enjoy life, taking old stuff apart and putting it back together.
“It’s fun out here, living large in Bryant …” Jim Dawson said.
His wife finished his sentence: “… just under the radar.”
Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com.
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