I WAS told there were crocs, but only after I’d been swimming.

THE first night in this tropical land of The Gambia in West Africa we ate in the company of hundreds of white butterflies.

OUTSIDE my window, the sky is suddenly blue, the sun catches the drops on the clothes-line carousel, gleams like silver on the ivy on the south side of the beeches and sets – as it were – the remaining beech leaves, low on the trees and scattered over the yard, on fire.

THE other morning, walking the scoured sands of Courtmacsherry Bay after the storm, I came upon many full, fat cockles.

Damien Enright on a stunning November spectacle.

WE call the little stream that runs alongside our garden Abhainn Éasca because one day, some years ago, I turned over a stone and found a twelve-inch long black eel.

AFTER the dry weeks it’s suddenly the rainy season.

LAST week the first storm of winter in this part of the world, with the huge gunnera leaves in the garden almost flying off their stalks – they need controlling anyway – and things going bang in the night.

WHEN the sun came out, half a dozen butterflies fluttered in the garden.

Dreoilín, dreoilín where is your nest?