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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (June 19, 2015)
3C THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JUNE 19, 2015 in the garden Q&A with Marlene House and Walter John The garden as teacher Q: Many of us see the master gardeners plot at the Clatsop County Fairgrounds. Who takes care of it? Where does it fit in the master gardeners program? A: The master gardeners take care of it. It is one of our community projects that master gardeners use to fulfill their community payback time. You are required to pay back what you got for training, which is roughly 60 hours. It is also used for recertification. We have an announced work day. In summer it’s usu- ally Wednesday from 5 p.m. until 8 p.m. In June and July, we’re getting it ready for the County Fair. Q: How big is the plot? A: Roughly 50-by-120 feet. It was established in 1998. Q: What is in the plot? How did the group decide what it would plant? A: We have roughly 100 different types of plants, be- tween perennials and annuals. Gardeners How did we decide? Two criteria: What we are friendly thought would grow and happy well here and what we thought people would people. like to see. There are some unusual plants When they’re there. Basically, it’s a demon- out there stration garden — teach- ing how to plant trees getting dirty, and shrubs and plants they have and also how to divide and transplant. If you go smiles on to the garden, you’ll see that there’s a lot of mis- their face. takes we made over the years. And a lot of things are coming into play now — po- tential problems we didn’t foresee. Tillamook has renamed its garden the Learning Gar- den. Ours has been a great teacher for me. Q: Describe the pleasure that you and your fellow master gardeners get from working on this plot. A: Gardeners are friendly and happy people. When they’re out there getting dirty, they have smiles on their face. There are pleasant meetings of the mind. There is also is potluck — a lot of good food and great JOSHUA BESSEX — The Daily Astorian Master gardener Walter John at the Clatsop County Fairgrounds. company. We enjoy that the pubic enjoys and learns from the garden. They love to see plants that they might want to buy but were not sure would work in this area. The public also learns about pruning, planting, dividing and, of course, weeding. Q: What is a gardening book that is popular among the Oregon State University master gardeners? A: There are many. Gardeners collect plants and they collect almost as many books as they have plants. One I find useful is the “Sunset Western Garden Book.” It covers just about everything. One of my favorites, which I got years ago, is “Right Plant, Right Place.” Marlene House and Walter John, who are master garden- ers, answered questions about the Oregon State University master gardeners demonstration plot at the Clatsop County Fairgrounds. THE SHIP REPORT What kind of sailboat is that? and aging wood. I remember the barn swallows swooping out of the rafters while we were prep- learned a lot from my fa- ping our boats for launch day. ther as a kid; being Daddy’s The wind whistling through the Little Girl has its perks. reeds in the brackish estuary that For instance, I rode around in fed into the Great South Bay. the car with him on weekends, That’s the nautical melting and by the tender age of seven, pot where I grew up, in Long Is- could tell a Ford Fairlane from land, N.Y. It’s where I learned to a Chevy Impala, no sweat. From tell sailboats apart. That’s where cars it was a natural progression I learned the difference between to learn about boats. some basic types of sailboats Dad’s been a sailor since way you’ll see around these parts, before I was born, and at some and pretty much everywhere: point when I was around 10 years namely the sloop, the ketch, the old he got the urge to own his own yawl, and the schooner. They boat. Eventually he decided to differ in the way they’re rigged build his own sailboat in our back- and the types of sails they carry. yard. (That’s a story for another The sloop is the most com- GD\6XI¿FHLWWRVD\P\PRWKHU mon type of recreational sailboat was a saint). During this process around. Sloops are the bulk car- and for many years afterward, we riers of the recreational sailing spent a lot of time in boatyards, world — they’re everywhere. If talking with his friends who were you go down to any marina in the sailors, talking about boats, and U.S., most of the sailboats will be HQGOHVVO\¿[LQJWKHP ¿EHUJODVVVORRSV$VORRSLVDVDLO- To this day, I get nostalgic boat that has one mast. Its sails are when I stand in a ramshackle old triangular (Marconi-rigged) usu- boat shed that smells of oiled dirt ally. This means that looking at it By JOANNE RIDEOUT Special to The Daily Astorian I from land, what you see is a boat with a tall pole sticking up out of its deck, and two triangles sus- pended, one in front of the mast (a jib) and one aft (the mainsail), catching the wind. You can see sloops in action in the spring and summer in the ZDWHUVRII$VWRULDGRZQVWUHDP IURP WKH $VWRULD %ULGJH 7KH $VWRULD<DFKW&OXEUDFLQJÀHHW is made up mostly of racing sloops called Olson 30s. Usual- ly when they are heading down- ZLQG WKH\¶OO À\ D ELJ EDOORRQ\ sail called a spinnaker. It can really catch the wind and make a boat go fast. $QRWKHU OHVV FRPPRQ EXW certainly not unusual type of recreational sailboat is one with two masts, where the after mast is shorter than the main mast. This type of boat is usually ei- ther a ketch or a yawl. $W ¿UVW JODQFH WKH\ FDQ ORRN identical, but when you look closer (as all good boat geeks do) you can see a difference that is un- mistakable: the small (or mizzen) mast on a ketch is in front of the rudder post (and usually in the cockpit where people sit), while the mizzen mast on a yawl (pro- nounced y’all, as in, “Hi, y’all!”), is usually on the after deck behind the cockpit. Both rigs carry a small jib up forward, a mainsail, and a small sail on the mizzen mast, called, appropriately, a mizzen. Most of the time the sails on sloops, ketches and yawls are triangular, but some have trap- ezoidal-shaped mainsails that have a bar on the top of the sail. These are gaff-rigged boats and the bar at the top of the sail is called a gaff. Last but not least on my short and not terribly comprehensive list is the schooner. Schooners have more than one mast as well, and can have multiple masts. I’ve VHHQ WKHP ZLWK ¿YH PDVWV EXW that kind of boat requires a big crew to sail it. The recreational schooner often has just two, with the shorter mast this time be- ing toward the front of the boat. Schooners can be Marconi or ALEX PAJUNAS — The Daily Astorian KMUN General Manager Joanne Rideout is the voice of The Ship Report. gaff-rigged, and are a lovely sight to see under sail. There are tuna schooners that you occasionally see plying the waters of the Co- OXPELD5LYHU7KH\JRIDUD¿HOG LQ WKH 3DFL¿F FDWFKLQJ ¿VK DQG storing them on ice in the hold. The U.S. Coast Guard likes them because they don’t necessarily need to be rescued when their en- gines fail — they just sail home. There are other types of sail- ing craft seen on the river that we could talk about, but I’ll leave you do to some research on your own. The lovely Lady Washington is a sailing ship, a square rigger, whose sails are mostly square in- stead of triangular. There is anoth- er intriguing rig called a Chinese junk, for the country where it orig- inated. I’ve heard that junks are uncomplicated, easy to sail and lots of fun. Occasionally, you’ll see one on the Columbia. Joanne Rideout is general manager of Coast Community Radio (KMUN-FM) in Asto- ria. She’s also the creator and producer of The Ship Report, a radio show and podcast about All Things Maritime. You can hear The Ship Report on Coast Community Radio at 8:48 a.m. weekdays at 91.9FM, streaming at www.coastradio.org. Podcast available on The Ship Report website at www.shipreport.net. GE T Y O U R CO PY TOD AY ! D iscoverO urCoa st.com
