A slow to fruit, gentle summer (January working bee)

At another productive Albert Street working bee, Ian meets Mara while ridding the apple trees of wooly aphids.

Mara and Nick offload Mara's gift of horse manure.

Woody catches up with Alison, weeding the front perennial patch.

After pulling out the old broadbean shoots, Koen and Ruby address the errant grape vine.

Kirsten and Zero work in the seedling patch.

Sylvain thins the down-the-back bed while Nick attends to the materials for the compost.

Earlier in the week mysterious cockerels turned up in the garden (we think painted by Cat).

Woody heads towards the compost, an adventure unto itself.

Tim and Sylvain weed, thin and manure the down-the-back bed.

Zeph and Woody play rumble between spurts of helpful production.

Ruby, Ivan, Fiona and Rose clean up the east facing wall ready to replant.

Others who came to the working bee (but were not captured in a pic) include: Fe, Luna, Fab, Tom, Patrick and Ashar. We need a working bee photographer! Get in touch if that role interests you.

23 community participants contributed to this month's working bee. Thank you to all who help keep the gifts flowing in the community. See you next bee on Saturday February 11.

Gifts from the gods of the flowering earth

Fe Porter and Ant Petrucci kicked off the end of year festivities by donating a large white musical instrument to the Albert street garden for all comers to play. It is not a piano, in Ant's words, a piano can be tuned. It is a musical instrument, to be enjoyed as it slowly falls back to earth.

On New Year's Eve gardeners walked from all over the town to gather on Vincent Street.

We assembled as a small representative of the gardening community, to walk among other groups in the annual Daylesford NYE parade.

Around 2000 people turned up to witness and enjoy the historic parade, which included a brass band, superheroes, a tip scavengers' float, a pipe band, the CFA, SES and many others.

Cat came as a flower, David came as a gardener-forester in bright red PJs, and Su impersonated Willow the goat.

Zero came as, well, himself. Awesome dog!

Kirsten, Nick and Ashar came as the bee family — bee keeper, bee hive and bee.

It was a beautiful, hot night and we gardeners won the grand prize for best 'float'.

The $500 donated by the Bendigo Community Bank will go on our Wombat Hill Nursery account and keep us in the black in 2017.

Our next bee will be on Saturday February 11 at the Albert Street garden at 10am. Hope you can make it.

Wishing you all a lean, green and joyous year ahead.