IT WAS another hot morning at the Cortijo El Jabali and the jay birds wuz stealin’ the cherries.

Damien Enright on the slow giants seen off our coasts

TODAY IS pleasantly cool, here in the Sierra Nevada, good weather for walking.

THESE DAYS the rabbits seen from our first floor windows hop about in a field of head-high buttercups. Every evening, about eight o’clock, a fox passes at the top of the field.

ONE WONDERS how far the nanny state can go in terms of nanny-ing us. I was amazed when an obliging digger driver said he couldn’t dig a pond deeper than two feet in our yard.

WHOEVER gets in, I hope they give me broadband!

LAST WEEK, hawthorn bushes covered in white flowers lined the bye-roads of West Cork, and the woods were bathed in deep purple with very few shafts of sunlight penetrating the thick canopy of the trees. Those beams that broke through spotlighted thick carpets of bluebells and mats of white ramsons on the forest floor.

Magpies, evidently, are given to feeding on the thick coat of a horse, along with their jackdaw flying companions.

FOLLOWING the publication of my column about the mystery of our missing dog, 14 readers were good enough to phone the Irish Examiner or to email me to offer advice or help.

OUR BELOVED old dog disappeared the other day: I believe she was dog-napped.