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Anne Yarwood

The Quiet Garden Movement Gallery

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WE CAN WRAP OUR DAILY LIVES, IN BEAUTY

A picture celebration of family and friends’ imaginings: skilful play, with all forms of Creativity

THE QUIET GARDEN MOVEMENT

The Quiet Garden Movement nurtures low cost, accessible, outdoor space for prayer, contemplation, rest and inspiration in a variety of settings, such as private homes, churches, schools and hospitals.

Quiet25 marks a significant moment in the Quiet Garden story. Celebrating 25 years of nurturing outdoor space for prayer and contemplation.

A growing global network of gardens in a variety of settings means the Movement enables people of all ages and backgrounds to access outdoor spaces to experience silence, contemplation and prayer, which are known to deeply nourish mind, body and soul.

Such experience is as important today as it ever has been – and with increasing recognition of the health and wellbeing benefits of silence and mindfulness in natural settings, it is essential we continue to share Quiet Gardens.

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Can, Also Cannot

By Blogs

A young woman Nirmala, painted in Barbara James’ Kuala Lumpur art class in those glorious early Tropical mornings. (see Story  – International Art Class).

Nirmala’s paintings of the Tree Ferns remain in my mind’s eye …

As does her response to many an enquiry….”CAN, ALSO CANNOT”, whilst shaking her head.

Her response gave permission to consider choice.

Would you agree, that today, the phrase represents wobble, confusion, unclear values?

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Celebrating 25 years of creative imagination in The Quiet Garden

By Blogs

We wrote in the February 19  Blog, about the Ascot Quiet Garden, illustrating the reflection with a glorious pink Tree Peony which has taken ten years to fully establish itself. Around 25 years before that, Oliver Simon, an Anglican priest in Bracknell ( where I was the Community Worker, in Social Services) whilst walking in our garden, said, “I’ve just heard about the Quiet Garden project. You’d really like it”. ( The Rt. Rev. Dr Oliver, some years later was ordained as the Bishop of the Diocese of Antsiranana, Northern Madagascar) 

I and thousands of others DID AND DO, LIKE IT. 

Dr Rowan Williams writes in launching QUIET 25: “The ancient tradition of silent contemplation is as important to the modern mind as it was to our forbears and The Quiet Garden Movement has been  facilitating the practice of mindful contemplation for the past 25 years in gardens around the world”

SEE quietgarden.org 

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HOW COME WE DIDN’T KNOW? Gallery

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WE CAN WRAP OUR DAILY LIVES, IN BEAUTY

A picture celebration of family and friends’ imaginings: skilful play, with all forms of Creativity

HOW COME WE DIDN’T KNOW ? 

Marion Macalpine is a London-based photographer who combines art photography with community and political issues. 

After a career in critical management research and teaching in the public and voluntary sectors, she is now using photography to raise and communicate critical concerns. These include the reconstitution of our public terrain as a marketplace, and how consent to this process has been managed, exemplified in the sell-off of the NHS. See the images from her travelling exhibition ‘How come we didn’t know?’ under ‘Projects-political and social’. She also undertakes personal projects.

This exhibition, about the corporate take-over of the NHS, is available to borrow if you can use it to help campaign to keep our NHS public.

 

Please click here to see the Exhibition – http://www.marionmacalpine.org.uk/how-come-we-didnt-know.html

See – http://www.hackneykeepournhspublic.org for more information about this, and about the Exhibition and where it has been shown to date. 

The Exhibition is also shown below in our Gallery – please click and open the first pix to scroll all through.

SHH & DOCS ( Save Heatherwood Hospital group & Defend our Community Services) two local campaigning groups, are planning to mount this exhibition in Ascot, East Berkshire in September / October 2017 

Replant, Rebuild … Keep Going ?? with confidence ………

By Blogs
 Some years ago now, a robust Buddleia bush flowered with purple plumes and Peacock butterflies. Then I pruned it. It died ! Here are the replants; three tones of purple. Bushes rooted well….NO BUTTERFLIES….and only a few years after an annual profusion. 2017 is a catastrophic year for butterflies. Mild winter, cold spring, late summer. 70 % drop in butterfly numbers.     See Butterfly Conservation.Org Greener UK. New consortium 13 Environmental groups; total membership 7.9 million members who see an opportunity in leaving the EU, as a pivotal  moment in which to enhance the UK’s environment.

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The Moment You Decide To Act

By Blogs

This purple Clematis has budded and shrivelled year after year, until 2017.

We had planted it against a metal arch. This Spring it moved itself away from the metal and into the close-by Rose. You see the result.

Question: what impelled the plant- saving move ?

Looking back at times of decision in our own lives… WHAT made us move ?

Always encouraged by Goethe – ” Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it”

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

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See You At The Bus Stop

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To mark our 60th wedding day remembrance we’ve rebuilt the play house which my son and husband built for the first grandchildren. Such fun !!! Day by day seeing our skilled carpenter Ray, jiggle the sections together. Watching Bus Stop’s reincarnation has been particularly encouraging because, as a family, we’re amidst painful health difficulties.

What I note is how CREATING something from our imaginations, gives a vibrant counterbalance to whatever surrounds our challenges. And stories of three other peoples’ challenges have arrived here, by chance, together…all HEALTH RELATED.

A Story about his pain is shared  by Andrea Berardi. In the Gallery, Marion Macalpine gives glimpses of her photographic campaigning about privatisation of the NHS. In Tales, Trisha Longworth writes about the NHS in Homeopathic terms.

3 stops for the Green Line 72 to …….the DETERMINATION TERMINUS.

 

Seats and Chairs gallery

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WE CAN WRAP OUR DAILY LIVES, IN BEAUTY

A picture celebration of family and friends’ imaginings: skilful play, with all forms of Creativity

 

SEATS & CHAIRS 

Seats in the garden hold firm many a visitor and gardener, over the years.

Space to LOOK, RECOVER, QUIETEN, REFLECT, PLAN NEXT PLANTING .

Chairs Indoors hold many a weariness, cosy chattidness, significant reporting .  WECOMING cuppa, ever to hand.

Looking around I see ghosts, small children now big adults, long-time friends, family.

Seats embroidered by my Father. Rattan chair made in the Pudu Jail, KUALA LUMPUR workshop….Stories quietly reverberate in the bushes and around corners.

Anne Yarwood

A Bird In My Hand

By Blogs

Andrew is our gardener for the past 15 years.

He cares for the grass, assiduously..rain or shine.

He is also a BIRD MAN ; knows a lot. Identifies by song and by descriptions.

Last week one of his daughters brought to him a fledgling Collar Dove. Found in Sainsbury’s car park. Been attacked. 3″ gash at its throat. When Andrew fed the scruffy pathetic creature ..all the food slid out of its crop.

Determined to save the Dove’s life, Andrew first tried Superglue. No good !

Next he found some nylon thread and stitched the gash. Bird lay still, in his hands

Now the Dove eats. Food stays in throat. Is digested. After feeding, the baby Dove snuggles up ,cupped in Bird Man’s hands, lying on the favourite old green jumper. Its feathers are just coming through.

‘Poetry, after all, is the honey of language’

By Blogs

So wrote Carol Ann Duffy, the Poet Laureate when she threw her weight behind the fledgling NATURAL BEE- KEEPING TRUST, in becoming NBKT’s PATRON.

“I am delighted to offer all the support I can to NBKT & to draw attention to the age-old connection between poetry and bees..We owe bees so much & should give everything in our power for their protection”

http://www.naturalbeekeepingtrust.org/

http://www.natural beekeeping trust.org/mantra