I started my garden with four plants and three edibles. When I bought them it was summer and they were all flowering.
My first problem was the molluscs. Our ivy-covered fence is home to a small community of slugs and snails, and I imagine the new plants were like a tasty buffet. I won this battle with my intricate defenses (small containers of beer), but most of the plants were never quite the same.
I had a lot of faith in the edibles and tried to keep them alive. I imagined harvesting parsley to make a plate of eggs or basil for a Kra Pao. But I couldn’t hack it. By the time we got back from New York, they’d all withered.
The flowers, on the other hand, survived. It’ll be next summer before they’re blooming again, but the Blue Glow and Sea Breeze are showing some foilage. I feel like I could be doing more, but they’re okay. All I have to do is wait.
Independent Arts is alive: independent-arts.org. I first mentioned it on the studio journal last year, and now there’s a logo, website and mission. We’ve also signed our first contract to fund six episodes of E Dey Happen.
In doing this, my goal is to separate practice from platform. IA will help artists produce passion projects, and wuruwuru will remain my creative outlet.
I often forget this, but all of these companies - Helloworld, Independent Arts, wuruwuru - are like folders to organise my work. At the end of the day, there’s just me - with 24 hours a day like everyone else.
Instead of thinking of these as separate streams of work, I want to think of them as plants in a garden. They will be in and out of bloom, but as long as I continue to water them, they’ll be ok.
Everything in its season.