A journal following the history, design, construction and operation of Bernard Kempinski's O Scale model railroad depicting the U. S. Military Railroad (USMRR) Aquia-Falmouth line in 1863, and other model railroad projects.
©Bernard Kempinski All text and images, except as noted, on this blog are copyrighted by the author and may not be used without permission.
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February 20, 2011

Crepe Murder

A warm February day- lets make tree armatures, I mean, lets prune the shrubs.
Not sure if AW or I is the Tom Sawyer.
 A warm day allowed AW and I to prune the Crepe Myrtle bushes.  Several years ago AW planted a set of Dwarf Crepe Myrtles in the front garden that make nice armatures for model trees.

So with me clipping and she picking off the seed pods, we performed Crepe Murder. That is AW's nick name for heavy pruning of the Crepe Myrtle shrubs.

While we were at it, we also pruned some other full sized Crepe Myrtles. These don't have the same bark texture as the dwarfs but there were a few seed clusters that might make decent trees.

Dwarf Crepe Myrtles.


Below is a white oak tree I made with weeds from the local field, a balsa trunk and leaf foliage from Silfor.  It is about 19 inches tall. The Silfor leaves are quite expensive. I used about half a $24 box just for this tree. I intend to plant it near the depot at Falmouth, but I haven't decided on the final location, so it doesn't have roots yet.  In the background are some cedar trees that Brian Kamerer sent me.

AW cleaning off seed pods

3 comments:

  1. One of the few places you can sleep closer to the tracks than the Station Inn!

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  2. Here in Mississippi, it is called crepe murder as well.

    I just was directed to your blog from a posting on The Miniatures Page. You have a great looking layout!

    Jim

    ReplyDelete