I’m looking forward to:

• More sunshine ☀️ - the weekend was pretty great!

• Our short courses starting (Women in the Shed with Maylei, Woodworking Projects with Dave and Drawing with Louisa are all kicking off this week).

• Arty Gardening on Friday … parents and kids, oldies and youngies … and anyone in between who enjoys creative outdoorsy activities is welcome to join Katrina in the garden and/or shed from 10.30am. This week we’ll be decorating and filling seed packets. Then why not stay for morning tea (at 11.30am with Kalimna).

• Our new play equipment arriving - finally. Lockdown delayed things a little, but we have a new cubby and sandpit now arriving (fingers crossed) on Wednesday. They’re going to be pretty gorgeous we think! Pop past later in the week for a play.

• Catching up with more of you! I did see lots of people last week and catch up on their news, but I was sick on Friday and missed seeing all our regular Friday friends. Hopefully this week!

Pods collected for nature play - in the garden on Wednesday (Playtime in the Garden) and Friday (Arty Gardening) mornings. There are activities on every weekday morning at ACC for young families.

Prefer shopping outside? And buying directly from local producers?

If you are already a keen Alphington Farmers Market shopper, or perhaps a local that hasn’t had a chance to visit on the weekend (kids sports and all!) you’ll be interested to know that you can now go past on Thursdays from 2-5pm for a midweek top up … or general shop.

Starts today.

We’re delighted to welcome Katrina Forstner to the team to help us make the most of our outdoor spaces in terms 3 and 4.

She’ll be with us on Friday mornings assisting the community gardeners to develop a forward plan for our gardens and 🌱 explore propagating, planting and composting etc. in more detail.

And at 10.30am each week she’ll have arty gardening activities available in the community shed and/or garden suitable for young families and people of all ages and abilities to join in. Just $5 for some arty crafty fun … and then stay on for morning tea at 11.30am.

Interested? Here’s what’s coming up:

• 16 July - Collect/sort seeds and make and decorate seed packets to take home as a gift or for community distribution via our Seed Library

• 23 July - Smudge sticks with herbs and flowers from the garden

• 30 July - Chase the rainbows away and make a cute cloud wall hanging

• 6 August - Indoor plant propagation and upcycle a can with colour.

It should be a great morning of low key creative fun for grandparents and grandchildren, parents and kinder kids, creative adults and anyone who enjoys spending time doing creative garden based (slightly messy sometimes) activities (with the reward of morning tea afterwards).

Just pop past any Friday morning during school term to check it out and join in. We’ll look forward to seeing you soon.

The latest Grow Local Cook Local workshop was called ‘Chive Talking’ and was all about using winter herbs that are easy to grow at home … and cooking dumplings.

Shu Yun came along to teach us. She is a dumpling expert. In fact she told us that for a couple of years she worked in a dumpling factory in Melbourne where she made 2100 dumplings a day - amazing!

Anyway, here’s a little video we made about what we did in the workshop and what we learnt. If you want to make dumplings yourself you can follow along.

Ingredients

• gyoza wraps

• minced pork

• ginger (pickled or fresh)

• spring onions

• baby spinach leaves

• cabbage

• Chinese rice wine

• sesame oil

• salt and pepper

• sugar

• vegetable oil

Thanks Melbourne Farmers Market for organising this workshop - it was terrific. Thanks City of Yarra for funding this fabulous series.

Book in to upcoming workshops, find recipes and see more photos here.

Our first Grow Local Cook Local workshop was lots of fun this week! Benedict from The Practical Beekeeper took us through how honey is made and all the intricacies of a bee hive. Then we headed into the kitchen to cook with honey with Rachael from Melbourne Farmers Markets … and at the end sat down to share our cooking. We’ve got more of these workshops coming up in the second week of the school holidays. Suitable for all ages. Book in here. Thanks Kalimna for taking these lovely pics!