[LUCAS]:

It’s now mid-February. We began this garden back in the middle of last year. Our contract – to gently guide the growth of this wonderful place, and to publically notice it, on this here blog – will run out in June.

With the new year, we began to try and turn our attention away from the soil and the beds, away from the very much here-and-now, away from the changing weather of the changing days. We’re now thinking of the future.

Now that there is ‘something’ established here, concrete, tangible, leafy – now that the space has been well and truly ‘occupied’ by our kindly colonialism, it’s time to think about how to make it last a bit longer. Will it all go to seed? To weed? Should we disassemble everything, smooth over the dirt and let the grass grow back? Or can it survive us? When we’re no longer coming along every week, who will tend to Tending?

So we’ve been chatting with Carolyn, who works with Ross (our ‘benevolent overlord’). Carolyn has offered to help out. Together, in the coming weeks, we’ll be talking with the artists, lecturers, workers and students who form the community here at Sydney College of the Arts, looking to come up with ways to make Tending their own. To make sure it continues to evolve. And to do ourselves out of a job!

[Before we began the planting – August 4th, 2010]

[Lush growth ensues – January 20th, 2011]