Square 8: Life begins in the soil

Friday afternoon Sylvie and I planted vegetables in the narrow soil border along the parking lot behind the building where I live. This will be the garden's second season. I'm trying to dig myself deeper into the soil.

American farmer, poet and economic critic Wendell Berry has said, "Urban people are connected to the land by their gastrointestinal tract." It's a tenuous relationship.

I grew up in the country and began learning principles of organic gardening from Ranger Rick magazine, but my family were city people so I had to learn more from experience than example. Early attempts at a vegetable garden were overrun by quackgrass and I did not develop faith in the Earth until much later.

During the 1990s I lived for three years on top of a hill of glacial gravel and attempted to establish a garden there. Preceding tenants had drenched the lawn with chemicals. The soil was dry and lifeless. I began by applying a few principles of permaculture I had read, laying down layers of newsprint, covering it with grass clippings, dried leaves, manure and any other organic material I could lay my hands on, and planting vegetable seedlings through these layers into the stony soil below.

The first two years were disappointing. Blight stunted the tomato and potato plants, while groundhogs ate practically everything else. I learned the creatures were attracted to cabbage crops, so by eliminating broccoli, Brussels sprouts and kohlrabi from the plan I persuaded rodents to leave everything else alone.

But more importantly, two years of adding voluminous organic material to the soil finally paid off. During the third summer the garden produced bumper crops of tomatoes, beans, onions and sweet corn.

It was a revelatory experience. I learned that you don't feed vegetables, you feed the soil. It is a complete ecosystem containing more species diversity than a tropical rainforest. Microscopic bacteria, fungi and protozoans, tiny nematodes, springtails and mites, larger earthworms, beetles and colonial insects, and the small mammals and birds that feed on them are members of an interdependent community. They support the cycles of water, gases and nutrients and maintain the soil structure that fosters healthy plants. Recent research has revolutionized understanding of how plants grow. For years farmers knew that the roots of certain crops harboured beneficial bacteria that fixed atmospheric nitrogen and made it available to plants, but we now realize plant roots depend on healthy symbiosis with a wider range of organisms. For example many tree species depend on symbiotic relationships between their roots and certain fungi.

If you have a garden, take time this season to think about what you're feeding it. If not, consider it whenever you pause to admire a rose, or pick up fresh produce from the supermarket. Many of us were raised to abhor dirt, but healthy soil is more valuable to life than pure gold.

While planting tomatoes, beans, peppers, chard and herbs, I got the idea to knit a square that would illustrate the dark beauty of the soil and its relationship to plants we depend on for food. It is not all bucolic and lovely either. Healthy dirt reminds us that nature depends on a healthy balance between life and death. We can't have one without the other. Beneath our feet carry on countless tales of predator and prey. Soil smells good when it is full of killing, eating, rotting, growing and breeding.

This square is comprised of four yarns: background Cascade in deep green, a brown three-ply wool I hand-dyed with black walnut, a variegated Malabrigo merino worsted in shades of growing plants, and an accent of yellow Létt-Lopi to highlight the relationship to sunlight.

Square 7: John Stabler

John died of cancer on Wednesday afternoon. Les got the news early yesterday morning and told me when he arrived at work. We spent a few hours cleaning the shop then he let me go early. I came home and directly set about knitting a story about John.

He was also a knitter, although we had never knit together. I didn't have a particular yarn with a story, so I did something different: went through my stash and picked a few colours that spoke to me about John. The blue is a special yarn, one that Danny and I dyed last summer using Saxon blue, a natural dye derived from indigo. This is the first time I have used so many different yarns in a knitted piece, and the first time I've used anything from the large stash of yarn that I have hand dyed. I made this square practically in one sitting last night, a vigil in John's honour, finishing a few minutes after midnight. This will be a good way to address the twists and turns of life for the next while.

John had gone into palliative care only 24 hours before he died, he hardly needed painkillers, his sister was with him and he went peacefully. That was the way he wished.

John and Les had been close friends for about 30 years. I made his acquaintance about 10 years ago, but we became friends more recently. When Les and I were building a large pipe organ for St. James Anglican Church in Dundas, Ontario, John helped occasionally when we needed to expedite a task, or when there was heavy work that required more than four hands. The two of us spent long hours together in the shop, wiring valves and toe boards while Les finished casework. By the time we finished that project a year ago, John was too sick to attend the inaugural recital on the organ.

He was a curmudgeon and savoured the fine art of complaint. But if he knew that you respected him he responded with great kindness and humour. He was a great baker and cook. He was good company through tedious work and gave me many tips about tools and shop work. I will miss him.

The organ at St. James was built in four divisions, one at each corner. The great and the solo flanked the baptistry, and the swell and choir stood at the front of the church on either side. A church team set up vintage cases from another organ for the great and solo, but we had to erect new cases for the swell and choir ourselves. These stood on the roof of the sacristy, and the cases themselves were 12 feet tall, so the top of the cases stood more than 20 feet above the floor of the church. In organ building you must move safely and agilely on ladders and catwalks. A misstep could maim you for live.

We constructed the swell first. John went up and screwed the roof planks down, a vertiginous job that involved crawling from beam to beam.

The next day we were ready to put the roof on the choir.

John said to me, "I'll let you do this one, since you have a head for heights."

"I don't have a head for heights, but I'm used to it," I laughed, then added sincerely, "I will do it."

Next thing I knew, John scrambled to the top of the choir to do it himself. That was the kind of friend he was.

Square 6: Spring in an Ontario woods

I am not enthralled with living in Southern Ontario. The summers are humid and oppressive, winters bitter and interminable. But come May 1 there is nowhere else on Earth I would rather be. Few beauties can surpass the awakening of our spring woodlands.

They are not grand. The land is mostly flat, so we lack scenic landscapes. A West Coast redwood would dwarf our most magnificent tree.

This is a beauty of small and sudden wonders: dogtooth violets and bloodroot open delicate blooms where nothing but dry leaves was visible yesterday, mummified branches shed their semblance of death and bear elusive fragrances in the warm sunlight, a shocking patch of marsh-marigolds floods a swampy clearing, overnight the twigs come alight with warblers in all their delicate and radiant plumage, and tree-lined galleries resonate with fruity songs of orioles and thrushes.

Then just as it begins, spring is over. Burgeoning maples shroud the understory in deep shade, the flowers fade, mosquitoes hold dominion and within a few weeks even the songs will vanish as birds avoid drawing attention to their clumsy fledglings.

But its ephemeral quality makes an Ontario spring all the more exquisite, and the rest of the year worth waiting through. Just don't be caught sleeping. This year I missed altogether the subtle blossoms of leatherwood and the not-so-subtle, lotus-like blooms of bloodroot. You have to make the choice to be in the right place at the right time to enjoy the Earth's great riches.

The Manos Del Uruguay wool yarn called "Wildflowers" was left over from a scarf I knitted several years ago, and the dark green Cascade suggests branches or shadows of trees.

Square 5: Renée Fleming

Last week on the way home from The Metropolitan Opera broadcast live in HD, Danny and I stopped at Romni Wools. I was still high from the performance, and to make matters worse Romni was playing opera arias. It gave me the idea that besides using yarn left over from projects, I could look for new yarn to evoke specific memories. Here is where the story blanket stops being economical, but I'm already committed up to the shoulders.

I had only been a casual opera fan until The Met began broadcasting live to silver screens around the world during the 2006/2007 season. They started with a series of crowd-pleasers, but Eugene Onegin enthralled me. I have always loved Tchaikovsky's music, but was unfamiliar with this opera.

It begins on the country estate of Tatiana's family, where the young heroine falls under the spell of charming, cold-hearted Onegin. It is autumn, and the stage is littered with bright leaves. Peasants enter singing a harvest song. The colours remind me of October cottage weekends, and I am swept up by the elegant drama of the music.

Renée Fleming carries off the letter-writing scene with fiery ambivalence: 15 minutes alone on stage portraying a girl's struggle with her first infatuation. The performance can be viewed on Youtube: part 1 and part 2. The music is dizzying, wrenching and lyrical. At the 4:20 point of part 2 the orchestra introduces a sweet, descending scale, which Tatiana picks up, imploring:

Who are you? My guardian angel
or a wily tempter?
Put my doubts at rest.
Maybe this is all an empty dream,
the self-deception of an inexperienced soul,
and something quite different is to be.

The musical motif appears again throughout the opera, and I would leave the theatre humming it, holding on until a recording could recall it for me.

Fortunately Fleming's letter-writing scene is recorded on Great Opera Scenes, and a few months later The Met would release the entire opera performance on DVD. Since then I have become an avid Fleming fan.

While dramatic, Eugene Onegin evokes a believable, human scale of acts and emotions. The central tragedy is regret, which everybody experiences. It gripped me mortally, drawing me under the spell of opera just as Tatiana falls for handsome Onegin.

Two years later at Romni Wools, Danny knew I was seeking yarn for the next blanket blanket square, but didn't know what particular opera was on my mind. He pointed out this Fibra Natura Heaven, and it had the Met performance of Eugene Onegin all over it. Watch the letter-writing scene and see these colours. They dominate the entire first act, underlining the passion of a girl whose love will go unrequited until too late.

Square 4: Lessons from knitting

Many artists are plagued by perfectionism; I seem to suffer from the opposite. Sure, I can be very picky when I choose to. When preparing a written piece for publication I can become a fussy self-editor. Alright I admit, I can meddle with a casual email or blog post for hours to get the words just right, especially when there is something more important I should be working on, so maybe I have a tight orifice somewhere. But generally when I'm knitting, drawing, doing photography or writing a poem I just do it and enjoy the ecstasy of creative absorption. When it comes time to PhotoShop an image, rip out stitches, twiddle, tweak, revise or correct mistakes, I lose patience and would rather move on to something new and fun.

I tend to knit things for myself, so who cares if I have the wrong number of stitches, or knit when I should have purled? No one else will look closely enough to notice. When I make something for one of my daughters it will frequently be for a birthday or special day. At 3:30 a.m. on Christmas morning I am not about to rip out five rows to get that seam just right.

Usually I am grateful for this personality trait. I do not admire the way perfectionists can torture themselves. "Will I ever get this right?" "This is just bad!" "I am a lousy writer, lousy mother, lousy whatever." "I do not deserve to live." I think I am happier in the Meatballs camp: "It just doesn't matter!"

But last year when a friend commissioned me to knit a hat, that changed. I didn't want to miss a single stitch. It was one of Danny's traveling rib hats, the most challenging pattern I have undertaken. I had to rip out work many times to master the technique. The cost of perfection was high, but in the end I had never been so satisfied with a knitted piece.

From that experience I learned not only some kick-ass knitting skills, but also tasted the pay-off of great patience.

When I finished and moved on to another project for myself, one which had lain idle for almost a year, I determined to do the same. It was an entrelac scarf using Noro Silk Garden colour no. 249. It is my favourite yarn ever. The palette seems to be drawn from a Van Gogh painting like Wheatfield With Crows. I wanted the scarf to be exquisite. There would be no mistakes this time!

I taught myself the entrelac technique from Debbie Bliss's book, How To Knit. More experienced knitters have told me entrelac is too hard for them. Sure, it was a challenge. The first few rows were excruciating. When I got a quarter of the way through the scarf, I noticed that my guage had changed as I got the hang of the technique. I didn't want one fat end and one snug end, so I ripped out hours upon hours of work and started over.

Thing is, I never got tired of working with that gorgeous yarn. Watching the colours blend and contrast, row after row, became a zen experience. I was mesmerized and delighted. I had bought four skeins of yarn for the scarf, but was disappointed when it started to run out. Not that the scarf was too short. I just wanted to keep knitting. In the end, it was my favourite thing I have ever knitted (I'm wearing it in the icon on this blog).

The blue and orange yarn in this square were left over from that scarf. It is a reminder of two important lessons.

First, perfectionism has its place. You might notice errors in some of the squares of this blanket. The first peice was my first attempt at a mitred square. Starting out, I decided to leave some of the flaws alone. After all this is my life, and mistakes are part of the story. But so is excellence, and hopefully that will emerge in the course of this adventure.

Second, the right materials and technique will turn a chore to pleasure. I suppose every artist must learn this lesson somehow, sometime. During the past year I have discovered my own deep well of patience. Yes, I can stick with a big project when it engages my senses and curiosity. It was this self-knowledge that inspired me to launch The Yarn.

Square 3: Danny

This square is for Danny, who taught me how to knit. He gave me the crimson yarn, one of his favourites left over form an old project. Crimson, the colour of love!

He also gave me the idea of inviting friends to participate in this blanket by donating yarn. The stories come from my life, and my friends are part of that.

That's all the story I have for this square, so I'll take the opportunity to tell you how to participate. If you are a knitter like Danny, hopefully you will have some cherished remnants from a finished project and a story to go with it. If not, or if you are a non-knitter, feel free to donate yarn anyway: something that speaks to you, about you or about me. Worsted weight is preferable (just ask at a yarn store), but I can accommodate other sizes, too. Any questions or suggestions?

The mailing address is Van Waffle, Box 115, 3-304 Stone Road West, Guelph, Ontario, Canada, N1G 4W4.

I bought a few skeins of two dark colours of Cascade yarn (this dark green and the dark purple in the previous square) to use throughout the blanket as a unifying element, so they will appear frequently.

Square 2: Mom's chemo cap

When Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002, she initially resisted taking any treatment. She had led a clean, healthy life and never spent a night in hospital since I was born in 1964. Chemotherapy and radiation would make her sick, and she did not want to be sick.

It was a hard stance to take and I think most of the family did not understand, but when she told me about it I said, "It's your life and your choice to make." Of course I wanted her to stay alive as long as possible, but I meant what I said. She was grateful that I was prepared to accept her decision, and willing to listen.

Eventually she changed her mind and accepted the oncologist's recommendation of a course of chemo. It made her sick for a year. It burned her mouth and she lost the ability to taste most foods.

Her hair fell out. I knitted a beanie for her with one of my favourite yarns, Noro Silk Garden. I don't know whether she wore it much. It was probably too colourful for her taste, but I know she cherished the gift. Our relationship had had some trouble, but during her battle with cancer we became close again.

After the treatment she had another healthy year. Then in 2005 we learned the cancer had reappeared in a lymph node. The road got harder from then on.

In the summer of 2007, when we knew that the disease was terminal, I asked her how she felt about the prospect of death. Once again she seemed grateful that I was willing to talk about it. She said she felt lucky to have learned the value of a day. Some people go through their entire lives and nothing makes them stop to think about it, so she was grateful to have learned to savour every one.

I said: "I understand. I have learned the same thing from battling with depression."

That surprised her, and I couldn't explain it, but it was true. I was happy for the glimpse of insight we shared into one another's lives.

Mom died peacefully, at home, on February 20, 2008. The blue and purple Silk Garden in this square, a remnant from Mom's beanie, reminds me to make the most of each day, because even the hard ones are worthwhile. To live that way is the best way I can think to honour my mother.