With rain and sunshine and warm weather our garden is looking fabulous at the minute. Some beautiful pale blue ixia bulbs have popped up in our front garden. Clare tells me they are from a donation in the seed library - so thanks for sharing neighbourhood friends!

We’ve started growing spring seedlings, and over the holidays Clare took our tomato seedlings home (along with some basil seedlings I think she said) to keep an eye on them, and they are now starting to look strong and healthy … so we should have some ready to give away in our seed library soon - keep an eye out if you haven’t got around to raising your own this year.

Last week Lee and Elena added some more hand-crafted bling to the very front corner. We’re trying to protect that garden bed as it gets established.

More generally all our programs are back up and running this week. AAA Arts recommenced last week, and our AAA Bowls along with our two Women in the Shed courses are starting mid week.

We have our AGM coming up very soon - let us know if you’d like to attend - and then two repair weekend workshops - clothes mending and bike repairs … these are part of the sustainability workshop series we’ve been running this semester with other houses in Yarra.

There’s always lots on at ACC. And we hope to see you here soon.

Our new bee garden right on the front corner benefitted from a mulch delivery on Friday. Thanks Bert and team at Darebin Council. It is looking great!

And … in the rest of our garden we’ve got lovely flowers 🌸 of all colours … and blossom emerging on our fruit trees. Happy nearly spring days.

How lovely are these little seed packs created by our gardeners on Friday!

They’re out in the seed library ready for neighbourhood planting … if you’re ready to start your spring garden pop past!

Over the last month or so we’ve been working on the somewhat neglected garden bed right at the front corner of our site. It’s always been a bit unkempt, and we’ve never quite known if we are maintaining it or if Council is. But recently we officially agreed that we would take charge into the future … and we started giving it a new lease of life with a little garden bed on top (donated by the neighbours across the road when they moved out - thanks!) and we filled it with fogo compost goodness … and we also took out the scrappy woody bushes that were making it awkward to sit on the bench seat … all in preparation for the planting of an insect attracting garden.

This week (on Friday) we started our replacement planting, thanks Darebin Council for the tube stock. We’ve got lots of lovely low growing mostly local indigenous plants going in - building on the legacy the Graeme started with the grasses he planted a few years ago - and we’re hoping the new plants survive and thrive. We’ll also be adding in some fabulous outdoor art I expect (we just have to come up with an inspiring idea!). So keep an eye out …

Thanks to everyone who helped out with the planting - and thanks to all the passers by who shared words of encouragement as we toiled away!

This week we replaced one of our compost bins - to keep our compost hub chugging along.

We bought a new Aerobin from Bunnings - but accidentally only picked up part 1 of 2 packages required for the bin when we dropped in before the holidays. Corrado realised parts were missing as he started putting it together … luckily the LOVELY Bunnings folk saved the day … two staff came by to drop the extra box to us within an hour of our call - how nice!

We love our little compost hub that enables neighbours to drop off scraps throughout the week. Along with our own kitchen scraps and the green garden waste from our raised beds, every few months we fill a bin.

Clare turns them on Friday for a few minutes. We keep a bag of straw/organic matter next to the bins and ask all contributors to add a handful as they go (so we’re balancing the ‘brown’ carbon and the ‘green’ nitrogen). Once the bin is full and well mixed we leave it for a month (and start filling the other bin).

And then … in the blink of an eye it seems, we have such great compost! It’s amazing how quickly it all happens with the right processes in place.

If you’d like to learn more about composting at home you can come along on Fridays and chat to Clare. She’s a wealth of knowledge. And if you live nearby and don’t have access to a compost bin you are welcome to contribute to ours!