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
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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
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is made up mostly of racing
sloops called Olson 30s. Usual-
ly when they are heading down-
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sail called a spinnaker. It can
really catch the wind and make
a boat go fast.
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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.
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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
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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-
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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 !
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