Eden Wild Goose Nature
Nature notes from the Focus Magazine December 2022

The Great Big Green Week

During September we ran a series of Eden Wild Goose activities linking with the national Great Big Green Week, including a talk in Holme Eden called...
 
‘The Wildlife Outside our Windows’

We’ve just lived through the first ‘Great Big Green Week’ when environmental and community groups everywhere were encouraged to do something around nature, either practical or informational. As part of our local response through Eden Wild Goose, we invited a speaker from Cumbria Wildlife Trust to give a talk on the wildlife outside our windows.
 
I know we can all feel a bit bashed about by the demands on us to do our bit for nature. It can certainly feel rather overwhelming. It’s so big and we can feel so small. So, it was wonderful to go home after this particular event feeling uplifted and inspired.
 
We were doubly fortunate in being allotted two speakers for the evening. One was a young man who has been working as an intern at CWT over this summer, and he shared with us his own journey of learning about the essential pollinators who live in our gardens and in the grass verges along our roads. It’s great to listen to experts, but it is just as good to share someone else’s learning journey and the genuine excitement they feel as their understanding and knowledge grows. Here was a young person who hopes to build his future in this kind of environment work, and it was lovely, even though we don’t know him, to celebrate the news that he had just heard he had been successful in obtaining his first proper job, following his months at CWT.
 
Our second speaker, Jamie, gave us a very gentle and real talk about his own garden and what he does to help nature there. You could feel his pleasure and fulfilment in looking after the plot of land that he can truly influence for the better. There was nothing overwhelming or guilt inducing here, just a story of an ordinary garden which is loved and cared for. What struck me most was his delight in watching what turned up in his garden via a night camera- blackbirds, rabbits, a cat and best of all, a hedgehog. Until this experiment he hadn’t realised he had hedgehogs coming to his garden. I also enjoyed the tale of the stoat family who took up residence in a neighbour’s outhouse and were given a warm welcome by her, even though she was inclined not to favour messy nature coming too close to her own patch.
 
This was a very special evening, thanks to the warm and sincere presentations given by our speakers. It was a community event held in St Paul’s Church and well attended. To me, even though God was never mentioned, it felt a truly spiritual time where I felt the goodness of God abundantly shown through the riches of the natural world.
 
Philippa Skinner