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A friend in the Emerald
Empire Garden Railroad Society stated that nature has
dead trees therefore a few make your mini-railroad scene
look more like the real thing. However, due to my not
so green thumb, an unusually dry and hot January and
February, and failure to plant my nursery stock quick
enough, I had an entire area with about one out of three
trees that had died; too many to look very natural.
I consolidated the corpses into a
yet unplanted area and took out the propane torch. After
planting the trees in an arrangement that looked natural,
my daughter helped me burn them ( photo 1).
(Two people may be necessary here because, depending on
how dry your dead trees are, one person can be on standby
with the garden hose to put out the fire after a few seconds
lest you be left with a pile of ashes). I felt it was necessary
to blacken the trunks, especially close to the ground where
the underbrush would have burned. I used a few Dwarf Alberta
Spruce trees obtained from Wal-Mart for $1.00 each when
they closed out their garden center at the end of summer.
These provided some bigger trees and because they were
alive, resulted in a few half burned trees (just like a
real forest fire).
The fire is along the tracks. “Not
unusual for a railroad to start a fire” stated
one member. It was also bounded by the limits of our
yard, a wash, and a rock cliff. These boundaries served
to provide natural limits to the fire.
Although I wouldn’t suggest killing
live trees to create a forest fire area, it is a better
use of the ones that died than popping them into the
recycle yard debris can. My friend from Emerald Empire
also says he gets dead trees from nurseries for free.
I’m sure they think he’s nuts when he goes
in and asks for any dead trees they have.
Photo 2 shows the area as it appears
now and as seen by those who attended our recent open
house. Some of the groundcover is just starting to fill
in and the Wal-Mart trees are still hanging in there.
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