Some nice pics from our garden beds today.

We’re hoping to build up our gardening program over the coming year and make the most of our garden space.

If you enjoy gardening you might like to think about joining us on a Friday morning? We’d love to see you when we reopen.

In the face of big issues we all naturally feel a little lost and helpless. But here are some practical things you can do to change the filter and/or make a difference:

• Sign up and petition for regular arts industry stories on the news! How great would it be to see one story a night about creative people doing their amazing things. This is a movement to make the arts more visible and to tell more good news stories.

Image from local Northcote artist @taisnaith.

• Speaking of which, choose to read Good News on the ABC news app. For example this week you can read about Zarna Carter, a non-Indigenous landholder, who freely gave the Nukunu Wapma Thura (NWT) Aboriginal Corporation her 12.1-hectare (30-acre) property in the Flinders Ranges here. Or check out some hilarious videos from a prep teacher called Mr Jackson in NSW (they call it kinder there) who is well and truly keeping his class and the parents entertained during lockdown here.

• Contribute to Australian artist Ben Quilty’s fund to raise money for the UNHCR efforts in Afghanistan. He leveraged some big donors to match small donations, and $1 million donated became $4 million. His campaign is still going.

• Donate food like rice and pasta, tinned tomatoes, lentils and honey along with essential everyday items like toothpaste, shampoo and deodorant to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and support refugee families here in Australia. We’re a collection point. Andy is here on Thursday mornings from 10am to 12pm to receive your donations, before driving them over to Footscray. Note you can leave your donations in the dark grey roller shed just inside the side gate anytime if no one is here!

Hi Kalimna here. How lovely are the APS lizards? I will be keeping a look out for them while I go for walks with our dog.

And to add to our collective community toolkit, I thought I could share a post from a dear friend who has a daily list for isolation wellbeing!

Imagine the following handwritten with little boxes beside them to tick off as you go :-)

• shower

• meditate

• drink water

• clean one thing / space

• tend to something growing / living

• be mindfully present to: a sound or song; a sensory feeling; something you see; a spiritual practice

• reach out to a human outside your home

• do one thing to get your heart rate up

• do one thing you will be glad you did later

• do one thing just because you want to

• get in at least one good laugh

This list reminded me of the happiness poster, gifs and video that Lee created last year when lockdowns were new to us all and we needed some good advice on how to care for ourselves and others with the new landscape of being at home all the time.

While not attempting to do everything on the list everyday (showering excluded) … I feel that this list is quite helpful … especially as we face this latest extension of our current lockdown.

Good luck everyone. Stay fit, stay happy, get laughing, get growing in your garden and talk to friends and neighbours when you can.

This week I was contacted by Amanda, an Alphington Primary School (APS) mum, asking if her children could put a lizard up on our fence. As part of a school project. And of course I said yes.

And then I got to thinking about what the lizard was for and why they were putting it up … and I rang her back and asked if her children would like to write a little post and tell us all about the project.

And here it is. Thanks so much Abigail and Joshua.

And, on a broader note, aren’t we just SO fortunate to have such caring and excellent local teachers and schools that so creatively give our children a framework, language and strategies to discuss and action positive mental health in these times.

When life contracts to the neighbourhood, community connections really do rock! And now, thanks to Abigail and Joshua, we can all look out for the APS lizards on our walks and know that we’re surrounded by kids and families thinking about our whole community, and that we’re not alone.

Here’s what they wrote …

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Alphington Primary School is a great place to learn and play. It is full of people who work very hard to make it an awesome environment for everyone.

Because of lockdown, we haven’t been able to come together like we usually would. Even though we catch up every day through Google Classroom, it has been a bit lonely sometimes. To show that we are still strongly connected, our wellbeing team came up with an idea.  The idea was to colour in some lizards (the school animal logo),  and put them in places that are visible in the community. This is to show that our community is united, even though we are not all at school. When we see an APS lizard out and about, it makes us feel happy to know that we are still there for each other, and that we are not alone. After lockdown is over, our lizard friends will help us to remember that we got through another lockdown together.

Thank you to Alphington Community Centre for allowing us to display one of our lizards. It’s a place that many families from our school pass by. We hope that they feel connected to us and others in our school community when they see it. 

 By Abigail and Joshua

Alphington Primary School Students

With lockdown extended we think a little community arts cheer is in order … so Lee and I have started work on two new community projects to see us all through the next couple of weeks.

Painted timber blocks … step one!

The first is an interactive neighbourhood project that we’ll need some creative help with …instructions and materials should be out the front of ACC over the weekend for you to collect. Look out for our community art bins … and join in!

We’re also planning to do a little ‘marker of the times’ installation onsite. We are certainly living in a unique era … we think it could be cool to acknowledge it. More to come on this soon.