News from the lakeside…

What a lot of weather we’ve had recently. It seems to have nothing but rained for weeks and there have been floods everywhere, particularly in Cumbria.

Now don’t worry, I’m not going to bang on about global warming, climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, or any of the other climatically doom-ridden headlines we read about in the papers daily – although we all know that we REALLY DO have a problem, we must do, EVEN the Americans are waking up to it. No, I’m not going to bang on about climate change, I want to tell you about something smaller, closer to home, somewhere we’ve been before - I want to bring you up to speed with what’s happening outside my office window.

You may remember a few months ago that I posted that I’d arrived at the office one morning to find that the small lake or large pond (it still depends on your perspective) outside of my office window was empty! All of the water had disappeared, well almost all, and there were only a couple of dirty puddles left at the bottom of the slimy liner. I posed the question ‘where had the water gone?’ and wondered what had happened to all the fish. As it turned out it appears that the pond had sprung a leak, the fish had been removed to safe haven, and it was going to be very expensive to sort it all out, so expensive that it might never happen.

Well here we are some four months later and I’m pleased to report that the pond has water in it once more. The lilies in their black plastic pots are looking as if they might survive, the wagtails are feeding again, and this morning the heron landed by the water’s edge and had a good look around, staying for about five minutes before disappointedly flying off in search of a fishy breakfast. No, the fish haven’t returned and the water isn’t very deep, the lake is by no means full, but at least it isn’t empty any longer.

So, how did this happen? Did the building agents spend the hundreds of thousands of pounds that they claim is required to repair the problem? Did they have a change of heart and decide that the lake was an important and vital habitat for wildlife? Or maybe they realised that the residents were getting a bit tired of looking out at a smelly mud-hole that might have come straight out of an episode of ‘Wild at Heart’ (and how did Hayley Mills grow so old?).

Well, actually, not. It was none of these, it just rained and rained and rained. Yes, it simply rained and the rainwater began to refill the lake and seems to continue to do so and since I took this picture the water has gained another six inches against the land. I don’t know how much further the water will rise or when the leak in the lake will come into play again, but for now we have water and plants and birds and whilst we can still see mud, at least it is wet mud and not the cracked, parched, dead, mud that we were quickly becoming used to.

That’s the thing with nature. It doesn’t give up. It’s relentless, it keeps trying. Leave it alone and it will fix itself. Nature will renew itself, it wants to live. It might not be quite the same as it was, it might be bigger, or smaller, or hotter, or colder, but it will survive, and work, and maybe even reinvent itself as something better. Perhaps nature will do that with this climate thing that we’ve helped cause, perhaps nature will repair the damage we’ve done with our Co2 emissions? Who knows, it might even lead to something better. I wonder if nature will let us be a part of it? Perhaps, like the building agents, we should pay the price and begin to repair the hole we’ve made in nature, and maybe if we do that we may get the chance to play a part in nature’s repair process.

For my part - I think I’ll buy a couple of goldfish, throw them into the lake, and wait and see what happens.