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Inspiration
Acu. | Issue #28 | Autumn 2020
Abundant splendour All that creative and nurturing energy BAcC members usually lavish on their patients had to go somewhere during lockdown, and in many cases it was into the gardens, allotments and window boxes. The public's loss is nature's gain – and we thought we'd feature a few examples of acupuncturists turning their fingers green in celebration of all things growing and blooming.
Audley Burnett re Member: Carmarthenshi On this hillside in Wales, lockdown came on like the guillotine. I had not yet risen from winter’s watery depths – which I find particularly causatively hard – and the effects were rolled on by a trying, strike-beset train trip to Venice in January, and an unfulfilling and unproductive ‘sabbatical’ in February which I devoted to depressed sleep. I heard early on from our doctors and professors in Harbin, China (BAcC trip 2018) and closed my peculiar British practices in the first week of March. In retrospect I should have followed my intuitive fears earlier. The silver lining was six months’ hyperactive and close attention to that which had received little care on our acres over the last 20 or so years. These pictures are of the carefully hand-sieved compost made to restore some heart to the earth in our obligatory West Wales poly tunnel. They show riddled compost and compost with the addition of beehive cleanings of old wax and propolis. It was good enough to eat or scour faces with! Six months on I am still sailing into the unknown and No More Business as Usual but with soil in better productive condition. #ExtinctionRebellion
Beveley de Valois ex les BAcC Fellow: Midd
Hand-siev
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Lisa Collins Member: Shropshir e In honour of National Allotment Week here is today's harvest. I was very lucky to get a quarter size plot in May last year and so this is my first full year growing from seed. I am amazed at how it has been feeding us. It really does taste so much more fresh. Today I've started giving it away to neighbours and friends too. Plus what a blessing to have had this special place of tranquillity this year. Still to come... sweetcorn and a few other new plantings I hope!
Allotmen
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‘Pods’ is my 2020 allotment theme – from Basque teardrop peas from seed sourced by an ex-patient now retired in Spain to ‘pods’ of visiting friends. My allotment of 13 years fulfils many roles – it’s my larder, gym, florist, creative space, source of inspiration, and more. Invaluable for getting out during lockdown, my get-away-fromit-all space has ironically become a place for meetings and celebrations – in socially distanced pods, of course. Friends come to spend time in its ‘magic’ ‘healing’ space. Conditor horti felicitatis auctor: they who plant a garden plant happiness. 2020 has proved the truth of this for me.
