The title sums up whats been happening in March 🙂
Part of the Natural Communities Trainee-ship with The Conservation Volunteers includes training, as you probably would expect!  While we all come into this position with varied knowledge of our natural environment and how we can effectively engage with the communities, there is always plenty of space in the ol’ grey cells of our brains for our learning and experiences to evolve and grow.  The past month has been one big brainstorming session let me tell you 🙂 from all the courses attended this month by far the most useful to me and hopefully the community of Cumbernauld will be the Curriculum of Excellence and the John Muir Leadership day.  I have two events coming up in the very near future that will help celebrate the year of John Muir, have a look on our Facebook page for more details https://www.facebook.com/CumbernauldLivingLandscape
So who was John Muir? He was an amazing man and regarded as the “Father of National Parks” a conservationist, botanist, inventor, writer, a lobbyist and a spiritual man with a deep love and enthusiasm of all things related to nature. Do you remember the Wallace and Gromit film The Wrong Trousers and the bed that springs up to help you get out of bed??? ……Invented in the 1800’s by none other than John Muir! Find out more about him, read one of his books or do a bit of online research or better yet do the John Muir Award!
New College Lanarkshire – Wildlife gardening
The students in the Independent Living Skills and the Environmental and Global Affairs got in touch with me and asked if I could go and give some advice on a wildlife garden they were about to begin. So off I popped for an hour long talk on wildlife gardens – I ended up staying all day 🙂 It was fantastic the amount of ideas on which plants to sew, how to plant them and how to have a variety of habitats in a small area started flying about, by the end of the day we had compared Cumbernauld Living Landscape projects, studied Pinterest for recycled planter ideas and finished of with a camera trap show – we have 2 cameras that are triggered by animal movement out in Cumbernauld at present and we collect the images to see what animal life we have. Well everyone was riveted 🙂 I go back after the Easter break to see their progress and this time I will get photos.  The group may also want to work towards the John Muir Award too, I’ll keep you posted.
I am Bikes
One of the events I am planning is in collusion with I am Bikes who are a bike recycling charity based in Lenziemill. They have a project called The Cycle to the Moon Challenge (yup all 240,000 miles of it) open to all residents of Cumbernauld to get on their bikes and contribute towards the distance over a period of 15 months.  With the Cumbernauld Glen, Glen Mile mountain bike trail covering a mile exactly it is an easy way to help clock off those miles, a great excuse to get outdoors, enjoy nature and get fit. The John Muir Celebration day will be held in Cumbernauld Glen on the 8th of June at the Glen Mile mountain bike trail 12pm – 4pm.  There will be more details on the Facebook pages soon.
We have had John Muir, Cycling and a wee bit of wildlife gardening so what about seed bombs?
Seed bombing with the Scottish Spina Bifida Association
Seed Bomb kit from Kabloom
Firstly what is a seed bomb? Well it is a mixture of paper pulp, peat free soil/compost and wildlflower seeds shaped into a wee ball which is chucked (thrown) onto a suitable area of rough ground (look up guerrilla gardening) easy 😀
The Scottish Spina Bifida Association and the Friends of Cumbernauld Community Park asked us to show them how to make seed bombs for the Open Day they had on the 30th of March.  I took the new kit to the children the week before and we got a bit mucky making Loads of flower bombs.The children had a brilliant time I’ll let the photos speak for themselves. 🙂
  
 
We will have the seed bombing kit at most of our events this year next one coming up is the Spring Fling at Palacerigg Country Park on the 20th and 21st of April, come for a visit and have a blast 🙂