The committee met on Tuesdays. Sharon kept the minutes. The minutes were thorough. She recorded who spoke, what was proposed, what was tabled. She noted abstentions separately from absences, because the difference mattered — or it had once, when someone had pointed out that it did, and after that it was in the template.
The committee reviewed applications for the garden. The garden was behind the building, between the loading dock and the fence. It had eight raised beds and a tap that only worked if you turned it past the resistance and then back, which wasn't written down anywhere.
Carl brought tomatoes. He'd been bringing tomatoes since before the committee. He'd been growing them in the bed closest to the fence, the one with the best sun, since the building was a warehouse and the garden was just a patch of ground that someone's grandmother had started digging one May. The committee had formed afterward, when the building became offices and someone needed to insure the liability. Carl had filled out the application. His handwriting was bad. Sharon had filed it.
On Tuesday, the committee reviewed a proposal to reassign bed allocation based on seniority. It was a thoughtful proposal. It defined seniority. It specified a review cycle. It addressed the question of what happened when someone stopped coming — how many weeks before the bed was considered abandoned.
Sharon kept the minutes. She noted that Carl was absent.
Carl was in the garden. It was Tuesday, and the tomatoes didn't know that.