But then what you do with it?

[DIEGO]

Ok, Tending is producing, big time, the tender tending to the tending garden is bearing fruit, giving us back potatoes, tomatoes, parsley, lemon grass, basil, cucumbers and more to come (see this promising watermelon!)

One important aspect of gardening is that when you have an abundance of harvest, you need to preserve it.
So here I am, with a bunch of great, organic, healthy, free cucumbers, and below is the responses to my task of finding out what to do with them.

cucumbers

From Facebook:

while Lucas chimes in on Flickr:

bilateral added this photo to their favorites. (2 days ago)

bilateral (2 days ago | reply)

ok, here’s a recipe for making those pickles, boss:

www.flickr.com/photos/bilateral/364425028/in/ photostream/

and a pic of the results, when i made them a few years ago:

www.flickr.com/photos/bilateral/364420890/in/ photostream/

these days, i reckon i’d slice em more finely.

do you need any jars?

YUM!

on watering systems and the abundance of it

water

[DIEGO]:

It has been raining again, another wet moon, January promise to be no exception, more to come in the next weeks.
This is marvelous news for our gardens, and not so much for other areas where the downpours gained remarkable proportions..
The gardens, the parks, the streets and gutters all sport impressive growth.
Me and Lucas had a season’s break, while the whole campus at SCA shut down during the holiday.
To ensure a happy garden on our return we installed an automatic watering system, so that a minimal survival amount would be delivered.
But then it just kept reining, regularly, on intervals no longer then 10/15 days.

All the better for Tending, whose auspicious beginning brought potatoes, tomatoes, plenty of mustard greens and even unexpected peas from the mulch!

potatoes

🙂
The new year is starting, and the garden seems keen.
As a side development we acquired a push mower, in attempt to manage some areas and harvest green manure. I requested to leave one little corner untouched, un-mowed, unrestrained, for the good of the complexities.

Here I am, believe or not, mowing the grass>>

mower

and so was the sun

[Diego]

What a beautiful day, full of surprises and good will.

Tending, 11 Nov 2011

Sarah (is this how you spell it?) came in today with a set of potted letters, which she’s growing for her upcoming master degree show, in December, so in the mean time they are acclimatising to the SCA’s grounds.
We also got some more banana pups from Michelle, who generously traded them for a couple of bags of soil me and Lucas collected from Callan Park’s gardener, Glen.

yay!
Grapes too, and water chestnuts, parsley, and bees!, native ones.

Awaiting for the pollinating garden now, but in the meantime, the Graduate show of Sydney College of the Arts is on next week!

new gardens of spring

[Diego]

Spring sprung, sorry the pun. It is here, the rainy moon we’re experiencing is thrusting everything into life, so green.
And people come out and make gardens, even more now.

Below is the result of a permablitz on a verge, in LiIlyfield, a couple of Ks down the hill, I believe Heather and Jes took part in it.
verge

verge

The result is outstanding, i was especially impressed by the size of the tomatoes plants and fruits, the rainy water lovingly fostering all plants.

A couple of new gardens came to be in Tending too. One, a classic combination, tomatoes and basil, each looking after the other, and the other is a start of a Banana circle,
Thanks to Michele of Enmore, who donated us a number of Lady’s finger banana pups, in exchange for soil, so we eagerly sealed the barter, and now we a have a starting wonder, right were the horse poo enriched the soil, they should love it.
Some of the cluster are going to another garden thou, yet another one 🙂
This time in Roselle, at Anyplace, were some brilliant growing will happen soon.
Me and Heather and Justine went to speak with Jase last week, and started some clean-up this sunday, stay tuned.

next Tending day is this thursday, from 9ish, Nick should pop in, and we the whole new pile of soil we collected from Callan Park’s gardeners, we should be ready to start the melissa garden no?

Below then is me posting a video

Big Green Thumbs Up
🙂

Tending at Social Relations and Critical Spaces

composite

[Diego]
Caleb Kelly is one of the lecturers at SCA, and, amongst other things, runs a class for Art Theory, Social Relations and Critical Spaces.
In it it tends to present the reality of post-object art, presenting the works of the like of Gordon-Matta Clark, Vito Acconci and ( I would assume) Alan Kaprow, the situationist, the fluxus movement etc..
As stated in the course outline;

In 1971, Conceptual artist Gordon Matta-Clark, among others, opened Food, a restaurant run by artists, where cooking and dining became a means of artistic expression and debate. Twenty years later, Rirkrit Tiravanija’s work Untitled (Free) took the form of a Thai meal cooked by the artist in the gallery for its patrons. Taking its cue form works such as these, this elective explores expanded models of contemporary art practice and new forms of institutional and social critique. Drawing on the legacies of Situationism and Conceptual Art, it addresses the current dynamics of authorship (such as collaboration and artist collectives), spectatorship, and the politics of space.

So when the Tending garden project started in the courtyard beside the library Caleb quickly enlisted as a great supporter, organising public presentations and lectures.
Above is the image of Lucas presenting Tending to one half of the class, in the garden, on a glorious (outdoor) day.
The students were very engaged with the presentation, asking key questions on a variety of aspects of such an academic adventure as growing a garden could be.
Fantastically they also engaged in follow up conversations on their own blog , here, where some of the questions and reasoning popped back up.
Is it art?
uhmm
Short answer is YES.
Long answer is: does it matter? If as cultural practitioners the end game is communication, does it matter if it fits the label?
Lots of academics delved in recent decades on the thorny question ‘does art have agency’, does art really activate anything outside of its own bubble, can art realistically engage in a constructive and critically-participatory way with modern society?
Or is it just furniture, preaching to converted, high-end consumerist comfort-food for the intellect?

I truly recommend this post by Jodie as an example of how the listeners digested the Tending presentation.
Hopefully some of this people will come about and follow the growing through, inserting their own personal readings as layers of soil, and compost.

As for highlighting the already solid connection of Tending with the outside world surrounding the campus, we (Tending and a number of other keen gardeners) have been invited to advise on a gardening project at Anyplace, the new Leichhardt Council supported artist studios complex just up the road from SCA, see details here.
Get in contact if you want to participate too, Anyplace is worth it. First meeting this coming Monday, send a mail to tending.

Somewhat making a garden sets up a level ground for all, or as Jodie post, a garden could well sit outside all of the already defined structures, transversely joining and inverting them all.