Yesterday we had a new little street library installed out the front of ACC - not a book library this time, but a seed library!

This is a new initiative of the City of Darebin. There are four of these libraries being installed across the municipality. We’re feeling very lucky to have one of them, and we’d like to thank Natalie at Council for getting such a great project off the ground (and Tommy for making and installing the library at ACC). The little structure is super cute and a great addition to our garden and neighbourhood!

So … now you are invited to use it. You can pop past and take seeds obviously … and then, when you have them .. share some seeds from your garden.

Luckily we had some ready to go. Louise from the Fairfield Community Garden dropped off a big bag of dried out broccoli seeds still on the stems just before Christmas last year. Which we packaged up. And then Win brought some silverbeet seeds to community lunch earlier in the year for friends and fellow lunchers to take home.

if you’ve got seeds to share Darebin has provided cute little envelopes for you to put them in. They’re on the bottom shelf! You can also drop off a bag of seeds (stick them on the bottom shelf as well, with a note letting us know what they are) or leave them with us if we are onsite… and we’ll package them up into the smaller packs if you don’t get the chance yourself.

So now there’s no need to feel bad about letting your veggies go to seed! Instead think of it as an opportunity to be neighbourly. We’re looking forward to seeing more seeds in our new seed library soon. How fun. Aren’t we lucky? Happy gardening friends.

Usually at ACC our Gardening Group comes along each Friday and tends the fruit trees in our little orchard, waters and cares for the community herb gardens, wrangles the leaves (oh the leaves), turns the community compost bins and pulls up the weeds. They keep everything looking so lovely.

Yes, we are missing them!

Everything seemed okay in winter … but then spring arrived. In the last couple of weeks our garden has gone from slightly raggedy to verging on a jungle!

Anyway, neighbours, you’ll be pleased to know that this week we started the process of getting it ship-shape again. We began by weeding along the fence, tidying up the hill and sweeping the concrete.

And we’ll keep going next week until it is all back in order.

Because actually (currently hidden in the there amongst the weeds) some pretty exciting growing has been going on. And we’d like to show off. Like the plum trees. They are full of fruit this year. It’s quite a thrill - the prospect of our first real harvest!

Fingers crossed.

Our AGM is coming up on October 26th at 7pm. Unsurprisingly it is going to be an online affair.

Here’s a little video invitation - that also gives you a nice snapshot of what we have been up to over the last year if you can’t make it.

If you are keen to come along RSVP here and we will email you a Zoom link to join in.

Out in the street* … our tables are back. And we’re pleased to see that they are getting a whole lotta love**.

Happy neighbourhood days.

* Creedence Clearwater Revival ** Led Zepplin

Hi friends, school holidays are upon us again and ACC will be taking a break from our online news for two weeks … unless anything urgent pops up!

We’ll be back on deck and raring to go on Monday 5 October.

It is also worth noting that our AGM will be coming up on Monday 26 October at 7pm. It will be an online affair. Please register here if you’d like to attend and we’ll send you a link. And if you are interested in being on our committee next year please give me (Leanne) a call on 0411 561 420.