Here where the Irvington and Alameda neghborhoods of Portland meet, our native soil is clay. For the gardeners of the neighborhood, it's less than ideal, and so we do our best to break it up by adding all sorts of rich black soil, peat moss, and compost to our flower and vegetable beds. But when all that stuff breaks down, the clay is still there, soaking up water and acting dense. You can win out over it only for a while.

Right now there is on display one of the largest exhibits of Irvington clay you'll ever see, at the playground of the Madeleine School at NE 24th and Klickitat. This was a big expanse of blacktop for many decades (you can see it pretty clearly in this older satellite image), but now the macadam has been torn out to make way for an artificial-grass soccer field and some other amenities.

It looks as though they're trying to make the surface of the whole lot perfectly level, and that creates some interesting angles with the surrounding sidewalks, since the rights of way on that block most definitely have a slope:

As the neighorhood grouchy old coot opposed to change, I'm staying neutral on this one. There's a lot to like about it, but also some things to worry about. And as an old blacktop schoolyard man from wayback, I'm going to miss the familiar sight of Catholic school kids wrecking their uniforms doing unauthorized baseball slides and taking unanticipated tumbles on the hard surface. Long before there was Astroturf, there was stickball.

Anyway, if you ever wanted to write an ode to Irvington clay, now's the time to drop by for inspiration.