Hi all

We have our last Table to Plate for the term today (Monday). Join us from 11.30am to cook up something yummy!

Please note that unfortunately we have to cancel Preserves tomorrow. We will touch base with everyone today via the Whats App group.

Our garden is looking fabulous after the rain and the hard work of Jenny, Corrado and Dinesh on Friday … and we had a great time seeing our friends from GenU for art and craft on Friday morning as well. Check out the photos below.

Thanks also to Tahlia for holding the fort - she did a great job cooking dumplings and fried rice and a yummy chinese cabbage dish on Friday - yum. We look forward to seeing you on Friday for lunch this week if you can make it. Anyone is welcome to join us at 12pm.

We hope you have a great week.

See you soon.

Leanne

Sometimes I sit in the office and do all the background stuff that facilitates things … but don’t get to see what happens IRL (in real life).

With Jill away with her dislocated shoulder I (Leanne) filled in for her and went along to our longstanding AAA Bowls program - run in partnership with Alphington Bowls Club (ABC) on Wednesday mornings. This program is supported by funding from Yarra City Council.

Such a great program! I was so impressed. And it was such a glorious morning. The sun was shining and the set up was amazing! The whole green was set up with a variety of bowls games, special foams bowling balls 🎱… along with some of the normal heavy ones and traditional games for those who had the dexterity.

And amazing volunteers. John and Vicki and Diana really know all the attendees so well and spent the time helping each person join in the right activity for them. While the participants learn skills the volunteers did a lot of collecting of bowls - to make it easy for those in wheelchairs and generally less mobile to have a fabulous time.

And Colin (who runs the ABC bar) was roped in to cook the BBQ.

After an hour or so outside we sat down in the club rooms for tea and coffee, fruit and biscuits, and then enjoyed a sausage in bread with onions and coleslaw. Yum!

It was lovely to see so many people out enjoying the fresh air and sunny ☀️ winter day sharing a sport that they loved.

Thanks so much to everyone involved. ACC is very proud to facilitate this great program and we really love doing it with our amazing local colleagues/friends/neighbours at ABC.

Join local end-of-life doulas, Ann and Frederique, at 1pm on Thursday 26 June for our first monthly discussion on Embracing Life and Death, being held at the Alphington Community Centre.

This is a safe and welcoming space to talk about death, dying, life & loss with a view to normalising these conversations as part of living and dying well. A place to share stories, knowledge and resources. Free to attend with tea, coffee and cake provided. Please note this group does not provide bereavement support or grief counselling. 

Held at 1pm on the last Thursday of the month, spaces are limited so please register. For more information or to register please contact Andrea via e-mail on andrea_babon@yahoo.com

It’s a long weekend … which is lovely (apart from the weather obviously which has been pretty miserable. On the bright side the ski lifts are opening for any ski bunnies out there and the garden is no longer bone dry!).

This week we’ve got all the usual suspects … plus our Clothes Mending workshop coming up on Saturday from 10am-12pm. I think there are still spots if you are interested.

A reminder that Rosie is running community yoga and Keiko is running sound healing on Wednesday nights if you are interested!

Unfortunately Jill who runs our AAA Bowls program completes (we hope) our run of bad luck (it comes in threes right?), dislocating her shoulder (ouch! It sounded very painful when she called me from hospital on Tuesday). Luckily the Alphington Bowls Club volunteers are amazing and stepped up to run the program last Wednesday. Thanks John and co.

So many things lately!

It is a good reminder to take things as they come right?

For the next few weeks we have Tahlia helping out around the traps as Kalimna will be in a cast for another 5 weeks (I don’t think she can drive here - but we’ll see how it’s going over time). Say hi to Tahlia if you see her.

And we have Clara here doing her student placement. She’s going to work on documenting some individual stories whilst she’s here which will be great - we haven’t really done that before - and in the meantime as she’s getting to know us she’s been sharing her coffee making skills (bringing our coffees to a whole new level). We’re trying desperately to learn from her, but I think my (at least) coffees are getting worse in the face of such artistry! Come to Community Lunch on Friday or Crunch on Thursday to enjoy her extra fancy coffees yourself.

Anyway … enough babbling in …. we hope you have an excellent week and look forward to seeing you soon!

Cheers Leanne

Steer clear, steer clear! There seems to be some leg health related bad luck going down in our office. So after all my misery last week with sciatica, Kalimna contacted me on the weekend to say she fell over stepping up a gutter (I think, or something equally innocuous) and broke her knee cap. Ouch! It means she’s going to be in a cast for 6 weeks. And they are still determining if she needs an operation … poor sausage. Keep your fingers crossed for her.

Also … please be kind to us as we try to pick up and run seamlessly with all the things Kalimna usually does here at ACC. I am sure I am going to muck some things up - but hopefully we’ll get there in the end.

On to cheerier things, last week we had 2 birthdays to celebrate at Community Lunch - a belated celebration for Corina because I was away the week before, and then it was also Clare’s birthday. I made a stacked brownie cake (thanks Aldi packet mix brownies) with macarons on top, and Margaret from CWA made fabulous dark chocolate and orange cup cakes. Delightful. Between the two of these treats we had celebrations with both of Community Lunch friends and our AAA Arts friends.

Coming up … on the 14 June we have our Clothes Mending session. There are still some spots available if you are interested in joining in.

We also have 2 more sessions of Garden to Plate and Crunch for this term - if you are interested in joining us for lunch on a Monday (to help cook and then eat what we make) or Thursday (to eat and make some relaxing art together) - you can book in online and/or come along! Both of these activities are lovely and low key and they’ll run this week and next.

Also, we have a our last 2 sessions of AAA Bowls coming up on Wednesdays at 10am at Alphington Bowls Club. Jill and the volunteers from the club create an amazing experience for a variety of people who come along to the sessions. Everyone has a great time - and I am sure they will once again be looking forward to the BBQ in week 6. Please note that this program does not run in Term 3 (because of the weather) - but it will be back in Term 4.

A reminder that CWA will be meeting tonight at 7.30pm at the Gleeson Centre in the Darebin Parklands (at the end of Separation Street). If you are interested in hanging out and doing things with some lovely local women (some of whom are dynamos) you should think about going along and joining up! They not only craft and cook, but also support local social services through fundraising, run a book club and meet up for dinners - it’s a really great way to get involved and to make local connections.

It has been great to have some new faces at ACC on Fridays lately - having some additional hands and ideas generated in the Community Garden program on Fridays has been just super. We love it when new people come along and join in. If you are interested in gardening and spending some time outside pottering (it’s generally not too onerous) then join us from 10am-12pm Fridays. Last week they put a net up outside our main windows to catch the leaves from the gutters and keep the gardens a bit projected - we’ll see if this experiment is a success as autumn kicks into full swing (the leaves from the plane trees fall way faster than we can rake them up at this time of the year). The week before they fishished off setting up and planting out our new garden beds.

In the office we are currently in the midst of planning for next semester and finalising all things for the end of the financial year. We are thrilled that we have some new programs on the cards already:

• Introduction to weaving with Corrin (6 week course on a Wednesday) in the day and the evening

• Inner North Death Doula Hub - 4th Thursday of the month 1-3pm. This free program will facilitate discussions on life, loss, death and dying. The first one will be on Thursday 26 June.

• A new program for pre-schoolers - hopefully coming on Friday mornings for anyone who is interested in being active with their little ones!

If you are keen on any of these keep your eyes peeled - we’ll have the new brochure out in the next week or two so you can find out more!

And … if you have a great idea of something you could run, or something you’d like to see us run (and links to great facilitators etc.) we’d love to hear from you. Give us a call or pop in or send an email.

I hope you have an excellent week.

See you soon.

Leanne