The school holidays aren’t too far away and it’s time to begin thinking about places in the January 2012 Holiday Program for 12 to 18 year olds, organised by Council’s youth workers.  There’s a wide range of activities planned, some based at Hillsdale Community Hall while others are excursions. Some are free and for others there is a cost to meet expenses.  The program kicks off on Tuesday, January 10 with ice skating at the Canterbury Ice Rink. The bus leaves the Central Library at Eastgardens at 10:00am and returns at 2:30pm.

It is that time of year when I send out an SOS to our residents to assist us with the maintenance of our nature strips. With the hot weather and intermittent rain the grass, and unfortunately weeds, are growing like wild fire. In the last week alone it looks like all our nature strips are filled with dandelions (those yellow flowers which turn to fluffy balls the kids love to pick and blow everywhere!). Please, if you are mowing your own lawns on the weekend it would be appreciated if you could run the mower over the nature strip to keep our City looking good. Council mows the nature strips on a block system, which means each street is done every eight to 10 weeks. We try and get around more frequently in summer but it is difficult. So if you can lend a hand it would be very much appreciated by both council and your fellow residents.

After many entries and extensive judging, the results of this year’s Garden Competition are in. The judges gave me the list (I thought they would at least pass me the envelope!) and, as we’ve done in previous year’s, details are announced in the column. The overall winner was Andrew Stevenson from the Botannix Studio Café of Botany.