A Little More About Kleadrap

A Little More About Kleadrap

I suppose I ought to tell you a little more about Kleadrap. As I may have mentioned earlier, it's a small town, perhaps six hundred permanent residents. The main street runs along the Willamette meridian and is called appropriately, Baseline Road. Perhaps five numbered streets intersect Baseline, but at a peculiar angle. The surveyor, Dennis Crumb, who laid out the original grid for the town in 1908 was new to the discipline, and, despite having a bachelors degree in surveying and mapping, civil engineering, and mechanical engineering he was perhaps overwhelmed by the responsibility suddenly thrust upon him because, it seems he simply failed to take into account the magnetic declination for the area, roughly 15 degrees when plotting the embryonic town. Did he ever consider the Agonic Line?

As a result, all of the original North/South cross streets intersect Baseline at something greater or less than 90 degrees. Each platted block thereby became a parallelogram. To compound matters, when the early pioneers constructed their homes they measured from the center line of the nearby cross street to lay out the foundations for their homes rather than employ the 3:4:5 ratio. As a result all the primary buildings in Kleadrap are parallelograms. The one time visitor simply ‘passing through’ may not be aware of this as the difference is slight and as all buildings in ‘downtown’ Kleadrap conform to this aberration it is not particularly noticeable. Visitors may leave with a nagging sense that something didn’t seem quite right but be unable to identify the reason for their unease. Of course the inhabitants are made aware of this aberration every time they lay down tile or wall-to-wall carpeting. None of the walls in any of the early homes meet at a right angle.

Kleadrap has a current population of around 600 people, considerably more during the summer vacation period, and fall, when picking season (beets, rutabagas, and onions) is in full swing. Main street boasts one market, one gasoline station, one tavern, two gift shops, a post office, and two other buildings that are vacant most of the time, or accommodate various transient businesses for a few months. Tax time might see an accountant or two move in and rent an apartment above the tavern, and once in a while a local, or occasionally out-of-town artist sets up shop, but they soon realize there are too few people in the community, either permanent or transient, with too little discretionary income, to make any year round business viable.

This was not always so. Once, an opera house stood at the corner of Third and A street, attracting such luminaries as Paollie Accardi and Melanie Moreau. Historic rumor has it that Oscar Wilde had considered making an appearance. And there was the ‘Roller Dome’, located at the end of Lava Bed Road. There aren’t any photographs from that period but locals say Leo Selzer attended the opening. 

A twelve-grade school house, located next to the now boarded-up grange building, graduated twenty-seven classes over twenty-seven years. Now, only the rare discovery of an agate marble, or the oxidized tip from a spinning top indicates the fervent activity that must have once taken place.

Time rusts and dissolves everything, even memory.

Then came rumors that F. S. Whinkla had moved to Kleadrap. I think that was in the mid seventies.

Nothing has been the same since.

A Gardener Forgets, and Remembers

Reading My Life With Plants, an autobiographical reminiscence by Roy Lancaster, I was taken aback when I read about his first encounter with Gentiana lutea. Seems he had been accompanying a group of fellow botanists, grounds-keepers, gardeners and horticulturists on a visit to one of the too many magnificent English gardens abandoned and neglected for far too many years. Despite the passage of time he could still recall with joy entering what had once been the croquet lawn of an old estate, one of so many in England that went from employing a gardening staff of 100 to perhaps two, after the ‘Great War’.

So, what’s this got to do with me in 2024? Well, over the years I have, among several other demanding interests, actively immersed myself in the botanical/horticultural/gardening/plant propagation/hybridizing world. I’ve passed through many phases over the past sixty plus years, or rather I have spent more time with one genus over another for varying lengths of time. Heathers and Heaths occupied me for a year or two (the heather bed, virtually abandoned now, still grows vigorously, though I doubt I could find or name more than a few of the 100 plus varieties I once tended), then I went on to species roses, and the hybrids. Then the genus Rhododendron seemed to possess me, and occupied much of my time for a few years, only to be replaced by dwarf Conifers. I was spreading myself quite thin and wished there were more of me. I cultivated several penstemon beds and two mini bog gardens and then there was the rock garden, or gardens. I joined most of the societies devoted to promoting interest in these various plant groups. I joined The Heather Society, The Primrose Society, the Conifer Society, The North American Rock Garden Society, The American Hosta Society, The North American Lily Society, and I might have joined The American Avocado Society if one was available. I devoured their journals in a state of bliss, but the main reasons for joining was to have access to their annual seed exchanges. This is where seeds of hundreds of varieties unavailable and virtually unheard of in the commercial market place could be found. Treasures to make even King Midas’s fingers itch. I grew (continue to grow, though not quite as extravagantly) dozens of new plants every year, and despite my best efforts to keep timely and accurate records I loose track of too many seedlings.

So.

Late last summer as I was working/enjoying myself in what I call the 'Tea-house Garden' I noticed two tall, bright yellow flowers in a nearby bed. At first I thought they were perhaps Verbascum thapsus, a mullein, or even Phlomis fruticosa, the Jerusalem Sage, of which we have several, but there was something different about these plants. I sheathed my Hori and investigated. Clearing the area around their base I discovered an old ‘Venetian blind’ aluminum plant tag. Gentiana lutea is what I had scratched on it, but no planting date.

They very well could have bloomed in previous years without my taking notice, though unlikely.  Anyway, with the tag I was able to go to my records and notebooks and eventually find a brief history of the plants. I received the seeds, #1050, in the fall of 2017 from NARGS (North American Rock Garden Society). They were planted in a small pot on February 2nd and put in the refrigerator. They were taken out on May 3rd and only five days later six seeds germinated. They were eventually transplanted to a large six-cell plant tray. Three survived and were eventually planted out on May 5, 2018.

I find it hard to believe they took six years to bloom, but I find it equally difficult to think they had been blooming for a few years without my noticing. And now I realize I didn’t take any photographs! One person can only do or see so much I suppose. Still. . .

I Hold in my Hand

I hold in my hand a Dixon Ticonderoga HB #2 soft pencil.

I roll it slowly with my fingers, turn it end to end, and am awestruck.

A cursory examination shows it to be 37 picas long, sharpened at one end to a point, exposing a black material that I will assume, for now, to be a form of carbon/graphite. The opposite end is capped with a small tubular section of a pink, flexible artificial substance the same diameter as the pencil and attached by a tubular piece of crimped metal - aluminum I suppose. The eraser is said to be able to erase any thoughts or ideas unwittingly or accidentally committed to paper by the pencil. A useful feature, at times

The slender wooden shaft, milled from a billet of clear, rosy-tinted incense cedar, is flawless in its integrity. The shape and balance, the feel and heft, are perfection personified.

I’ve been led to understand that it is the only implement or device Santa will use when compiling his ‘lists’.

Not being a 100% Luddite I have elected to use a keyboard and computer to compose this note but will continue to use a Dixon Ticonderoga HB #2 soft pencil for all important ruminations.