Rounding Off

[poliphilo]

When Matthew's crew cut down the dead cherry tree I asked them to leave the trunk standing so that (a) it will remain a striking object in the landscape (b) provide a perch for birds, (c) be a home for fungii and insects and mosses and so on. I noticed today that the guy who did the work (another Matt) had rounded off the edges of the stumps of the branches- giving the job a pleasingly sculptural finish. I hadn't seen this done before and I wondered if it might also have a practical effect- like inhibiting rot by aiding the run-off of rainwater - so I googled "rounding off tree stumps" and got a number of sites explaining how to kill stumps using Roundup- which is quite a different matter- and something that's never going to happen here- not on my watch, anyway.