Lovely to have Cr Sophie Wade pop in with Malcolm and Kathy from Yarra City Council on Friday and join us for morning tea.

Brett shared a beautiful poem with us all and we ate chocolate cake and wagon wheels, and drank Friends of Baucau coffee (you can buy yours from Juliet at the milkbar - and feel happy that you’re supporting great things with each cup you drink!).

After the caffeine/sugar rush I took Sophie on a tour of our house and talked her ear off about all the great community building activities we do and creative programs we run.

Thanks for coming past Sophie. We really appreciate all the support we get and the wonderful partnership we have with Yarra City Council staff and councillors.

Aww … how cute. And such a happy end to a Monday! I spotted this porcelain frog 🐸 in our seed library as I was leaving work - minding some new seed packets donated by an unknown lovely community friend.

Neighbourhoodliness is the best! Thanks Darebin Council for installing our seed library. We love ❤️ it.

Tonight (Sunday) ACC and Friends of Baucau catered the Music in Exile event at the Fairfield Amphitheatre that was put on by Yarra Council and Yarra City Arts.

ACC contributed to planning and made the main course - a grain salad with dolmades and dip and bread … and Friends of Baucau used catering from Taste of Timor for delicious Portuguese tarts and coconut steamed buns and samosas … and we also bought soft drinks and watermelon and zooper doopers … all the essentials for family summer catering!

It was a fabulous event with excellent music. Elsy Wameyo was particularly great (I thought).

Music in Exile is rolling across Yarra this month. If you are keen to attend you can find all the details here.

Thanks Olivia at Yarra Arts for organising such a great event and inviting us to be part of it!

Some silverbeet, spring onions, tomatoes and dried beans (that we wlll save to replant) … came from the garden this week.

It has been a long hot summer and we haven’t quite got our automatic drip system right yet …so it was nice to even harvest these after 4 weeks of accidental neglect. I expect the families who have been using our garden every day over summer probably helped out and had a tomato 🍅 or two along the way … better to be eaten than wasted!

Thanks Anne and Elaine for coming along Friday to help wrestle things back under control.

Well, what a difference a month makes hey? Last time we spoke Covid was a distant thing … and now … well every person and their dog has it - or has had it - or has family and good friends who have it - or had it …

It really does seem to affect different people in randomly different ways for little apparent reason so we hope you and everyone you love and care about are doing okay.

As always if you need a hand we’re here to rally the troops and/or help however we can. Just call or email if you need anything.

For the first half of this year I (Leanne) will be in the office each weekday except Thursday, and Kalimna will be working onsite Tuesday and Thursday.

Our office opens at 9.30am each day.

We’ll be resuming programming as per our brochure which you can find here.

We’re delighted that despite all the ups and downs lots of things are nearly booked out.

Women in the Shed is full, there are just a couple of spots left across our five Book Clubs and our Visible Mending workshop is proving very popular (note we just added a couple of extra places if you checked earlier and it was booked-out online).

We still have spots available in Louisa’s Observational Drawing classes on Saturdays, Kristian’s Collage classes on Tuesday evenings and in our Furniture Repair workshop - another great opportunity for you to reduce the things you send to landfill by fixing them instead of throwing them out! Find out more and book in here.

We’ve also got the Alphington Show coming up - remember that? We’ll publish more about this slightly competitive neighbourhood celebration of the ‘domestic arts’ - baking, knitting, jam making, flower arranging, stitching etc. in the coming weeks. It’s an all-ages fun opportunity to show off your talents and skills - with prizes!

We’re looking forward to seeing you at ACC this year. Remember, young families can join our formal playgroup on Tuesday mornings or drop past Wednesday mornings for Playtime in the Garden … when they can also borrow from our Toy Library.

And we’re continuing our Arty Gardening program on Fridays - for anyone who’d like to join Katrina outside to learn more about gardening or volunteer some time to help keep ACC looking lovely … and then stay around for Morning Tea in the Garden at 11am (all welcome to morning tea even if gardening isn’t your thing - just pop past for a catch up).

See you soon!