We’ve had an exciting week in our front garden this week with Mark and Mark from Pacific Australis Landscapes here finishing off all the big things that were in the pipeline before COVID put a halt to plans.

They’ve rearranged the rocks in our front garden to create some small seating areas, and have made room for a third raised garden bed (round this time). These garden beds will form the centre of what we hope will be an even more productive community garden. They are connected up to the water tank that was kindly donated and installed by Yarra Valley Water and we’re anticipating that they become a fabulous community resource, both in terms of creating opportunities for people to come along and get to know each other as they garden together, but also in terms of generating some food that can be used for local cooking and eating (for classes, for catering for morning tea etc. ).

If you pass by you might also notice that Jenny built a potting bench … and we’re looking forward to putting in a small greenhouse next to it so that we can germinate some seeds and have seedlings available in our street seed library into the future. So many fun new things …

Mark and Mark also finished off the landscaping out the front of the community shed, putting in some beautiful slabs of stone to create a dedicated seating area. Our community shed space is so well used and it is wonderful to think that it is 95% complete. Next week we’ll plant some native violets and white thyme in the gaps between the stone pavers and plant out the rest of that corner garden under the lemon tree and we’ll be done. Hooray!

Did you know we have a Lego Club here at ACC on a Monday night after school? It’s pretty great for Lego obsessed kids. Cat sets a challenge each week and they spend around an hour building and creating.

And she’s also running a school holiday program in week one of the upcoming holidays.

If you have a child or grandchild who might be interested in joining in then contact Cat here.

Here’s some work from a couple of weeks ago.

Hi everyone, Leanne here.

At ACC we all (well nearly all) need to do our first aid certificate again. Some of us (like Kalimna) need to do the refresher course and some of us (like me) are due to do the full course.

We are thinking of getting someone to come out to ACC to run the course (like we did last time) - most likely on a Wednesday which is the only day our main room is free. If you too need to - or would like to - get your first aid certificate (renewing it or doing it for the first time) and would like to join in our session, you can let us know here, and we’ll let you know the proposed date and cost. Cheers.

Hi all, happy days! After the 5 day lockdown ACC will be opening tomorrow (Thursday) with the same rules as before the lockdown.

We’re looking forward to seeing all our Japanese Playgroup friends along with the enthusiastic Thursday Women in the Shed group. Matthew’s Guitar Lessons are also back on tomorrow afternoon.

Anyone keen to drop off food for the ASRC should note that Andy wont be here this week, but our cupboard is open and you can still leave non-perishable goods here anytime. Not sure where to leave them? Give us a call.

Please also note that adults will need to wear masks indoors and everyone who is onsite for more than 15 minutes will need to register via the QR code, by visiting our website or popping into the office. Thanks all. See you soon.

At the end of 2020 we had lots of interesting conversations with people about how to revamp existing short courses, workshops and programs, and we also started exploring some new interesting ideas.

And this year we have put together a formal ‘Expression of Interest’ page on our website.

On this page we invite you to register if you are interested in :

• Being part of a Men in the Shed program this year - we need more people to commit to this program for it to be viable - and we’re interested in exploring what is should look like … are men in the area interested in making things with tools, or would doing some social things together suit more people, or is gardening a good draw card, or perhaps sharing cooking and meals might be the thing that men are interested in doing together? Once we have a number of people registered we’ll start exploring what this program should look like on the ground.

• Lego Club. Cat ran Lego Club last year in the school holidays and as an after school activity. This year she could run it on either a Monday or a Wednesday. We invite you to contact her to register your interest.

• An Introduction to Collage course, either on a weeknight or on the weekend. Local artist Maria has approached us and is offering to run an affordable collage class. If this is something that tickles your fancy we have a registration process for this as well.

• Spoon carving with local artist Maylei Hunt. This is probably one for semester 2, as we will need to find some funding to buy the equipment, but we’re wondering how many people would be keen …

To find out more and register just click here.