Our garden is coming along.

And with exciting plans and opportunities we hope more volunteers will come to enjoy time pottering in the garden here at ACC into the future.

Katrina and her special helper lent a hand when the soft mulch arrived and needed to be spread a few weeks ago.

Along with Jenny and Phil who mowed and mulched the never ending sea of leaves, Anne who planted and weeded and Demisse who also tackled the leaves - our garden is now getting wrangled into shape.

Volunteers are an invaluable resource for places like our community centre. Great things get done when they are here to help.

It really has been a fruity gardening week or two here at ACC. We’ve had lots of posts relating to gardening.

And the latest thing on our radar is medlars … have you ever heard of them?

Fairfield neighbour Bernie, who has come along to Preserves Group in the past, contacted us with a donation of some medlars - a fruit that looks a lot like a big rosehip and that tastes quite a lot like very ripe apricot (I think anyway).

Along with the fruit she gave us a recipe to make medlar jelly which, a bit like quince jelly, will have a lovely floral scent. And she also explained the process of bletting - where we have to leave the fruit out for a couple of weeks to go really soft and squishy, just like you would with a persimmon.

It is quite bizarre, because they are ready to eat when they look quite brown and rotten … but the skin peels off easily and they actually taste quite nice. Bernie says she often just eats them with cheese and biscuits at this point, and I can imagine this would be quite delicious.

If you are interested in finding out more about this unusual and ancient fruit, which has been around since Roman times, you can check them out on the bench in room 2 if you are passing by … they’re in some wooden trays under a cloth doing the bletting thing - take a peek.

Or let us know if you’d like to be involved in the day of jelly making … it will probably be on Friday morning this week or next (when the fruit is ripe enough to use).

Email us here if you are keen to join in. And thanks Bernie for the fruit donation and education!

Our little houses are jam packed with plants and seeds and books. Make the most of the glorious autumnal days with a neighbourhood walk - and pop past ACC to enjoy some community sharing and caring! ❤️

A few* years ago when Becca was still around we had Maria from My Green Garden come along to run an olive preserving workshop here at ACC. And at the end of the workshop we were instructed to put our brined produce in a dark place to do their magic.

Fast forward to today and at our home we are just about to renovate. And so the ‘dark place’ (in our case that being the bottom shelf of the pantry) was emptied. And the olives emerged.

I have to say they don’t look that fancy on the outside. But oh boy, they taste amazing.

I am convinced and now 150% on board with home olive preserving - if you’ve got the space to put them away for a year or two (or five!).

The method we used that I liked the most was a simple 10% salt brine solution, with a sheet of baking paper under the lid and a dash of olive oil on top of the water. One jar I opened also had a scrunched ball of paper inside to keep the olives under the water level. I know we tried a few methods in the workshop and I think Maria may have presoaked some of the olives for 4-10 days beforehand (my jars had notes on the lids reminding me of the pickling process). Others went straight in (note they just take longer to taste good).

I know I’ve been a bit vague with the details … but it was a while ago now … so here is a similar recipe to what I remember and here is another simple recipe from Mount Zero Olives that you might also like to try … their olives are delicious right? This recipe includes some vinegar and a two step process. But still seems doable.

Did you do that workshop too? It’d be great to hear what you thought (and if your olives were as yummy as mine).

*that’d be 2016!

A lovely photo of Anne starting the process of planting up our new garden bed from last week. We’ve got a dwarf lime for the centre of this bed, and then we’re filling it up around the edges with herbs - parsley, sage and oregano. Under the lime we’ll put some shallow root flowers to add a bit of colourful cheer like nasturtiums and alyssum.

The back two beds will have a clump or two of permanent plants like heritage rhubarb (this donation from our friend Mark has struggled along out on the front nature strip) and pineapple sage (ideal for neighbourhood cocktails hey friends …) and then some leafy greens and other crops that we’ll rotate through seasonally - for cooking and salads etc.

Fun hey? We’re also in the process of putting in a little seed raising greenhouse and potting station.

So if you are interested and would like to do something community minded and outdoorsy on a Friday morning - you might like to join us in the garden. Come along from 10am. We’ll reward your hard work with morning tea at 11.30am!

Note this week we’ll be planting out these beds AND spreading tan bark. So all muscled-wheel-barrow-friendly-folk are particularly welcome!