What IS the first thing you think about in the morning? This week we started a new community art project with the sander and dremel … engraving some conversation starters in our timber tables that live out on the front corner.

Keep an eye out for the finished product coming soon … and perhaps trial our questions next time you sit down there for a morning coffee or bike riding break …

On Thursday Darebin Council delivered some free compost to us. We used as much as we could on Friday but have about 1 cubic metre left. We’re hoping some friends in the neighbourhood come along and take the rest home … if you are keen please pop past with your spade and barrow or bag … we’ve put out a sign to let people know.

The compost is made from our green bins … so it’s extra nice to be thinking that it is the second life of what we have all thrown out!

This week we completed our long planned street art project - acknowledging the 262 days we collectively stayed at home to look after each other and protect the most vulnerable in our community between 22 March 2020 and 21 October 2021. Six colours - one for each lockdown. 262 lines - one for each day. Lovely to have Lee back on board this term to help deliver our community art project ideas!

What goes around comes around.

In the last month or so many in our community have embarked on their traditional annual epic tomato sauce/passata making ritual.

And because we mentioned in our newsletter that we had a glut of jars kindly donated by the community … some savvy readers asked if we could share the love. So of course we did.

In March many of our excess jars went back out into the Alphington/Fairfield universe to support local passata efforts.

And the results? Lena kindly shared a bottle or two of her delicious tomato sauce with us as thanks for sharing the jars. How great is neighbourhoodliness.

Hi Leanne here. Well term one is drawing to a close, and we’ll be taking leave for two weeks from this coming Friday. We will be back on Tuesday 26 April.

We hope you have a happy Easter and a lovely break.

And … If you are keen on a road trip along the lines of a four hour drive to Western Victoria, and a fun community event - I’ll see you at the Cavendish Redgum Festival on the last weekend of the holidays. My sister Merryn helps organise this festival in her tiny country town on the western side of the Grampians, and I am helping out with the catering for the Friday opening event and will also be assisting with the nature craft activities for kids (a specialty of mine as you all know from our events) on Saturday. There’ll also be tethered hot air balloon rides, bus tours to see magnificent trees, music, food and a dog jumping competition … fun!

Click here to find out more about the Cavendish Redgum Festival.