Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Hey Neighbor, Can I Have That Weed?

Imagine it - it's a nice, warm Easter Sunday, the first warm day in weeks, and you're outside working in your garden.  Your next-door neighbor strolls over and asks "Can I have any large weeds that you find?".  You chuckle, politely, and say "Sure, no problem", while thinking to yourself "WTF is this guy on?".

Actually, my neighbor was a very good sport about it, and agreed to give me any weeds she pulls that have interesting roots on them.  I invited her and her husband in to see the layout, showed them some of my "root trees", and they were genuinely impressed.  In fact, she brought over some really neat clippings from some plant, asking if I could use them.  I have no idea what the plant is, but when I saw the clippings, I thought "there's a pine tree hidden in there":

I clipped off the little seed pods and trimmed it up a bit, then wrapped a very thin layer of fiber-fill around it.  A quick shot of gray and brown spray paint, a sprinkle of ground foam, and I have this:

It's not quite the pine tree that I had imagined, but it's a neat tree nonetheless.  Since I'm modeling late fall/early winter, I won't use it, not on this layout, but it's an interesting tree armature.  I may try another one, trimming the armature down even further.  One last photo, showing one of the original clippings side-by-side with the tree:

4 comments:

  1. A very workable tree armature. I've been keeping my eyes open for such things. Picked up quite a stock of some weed or other from Gitchee-Gammi park in Duluth over the winter hope to give it a try on Knife River today or tomorrow

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  2. Hi.. will you be showing how to put your tree's together? Maybe you can ask your nieghbor what plant those came from? We can all plant them in our gardens for an abundant supply next fall. *grin*

    Marcia.

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  3. @Marcia: Sure, I'll post something in the near future showing how I made this tree.

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  4. Tracy that woud be Wonderful! I'm a total beginner with the railroad hobby so as many details as you can do I'll be right here learning from you. :)

    Marcia.

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