I WAS tidying up the small pond on the patio — taking out the algae that had grown in the warm weather and weeding the margins — and I noticed the number of goldfish had dwindled down to one, a plump yellow fish that had become rather reclusive, spending most of its time in deep meditation under a fringe of aubretia that had grown down into the water.

IF you have a vegetable garden May and June are the months when the weeds try to take it over. They seem particularly aggressive this year, probably because May was rather wet and the soil is still holding a lot of moisture. So I’m spending time using the hoe, or on my knees hand-weeding the spots where the hoe is too indiscriminate a weapon. This year, however, I have a new interest. I’m looking out for the forget-me-not shield bug.

IT’S said that the English word butterfly was first coined to describe the brimstone, which is butter yellow in colour. At least the males are, the females are more green than yellow.

I SPEND a lot of my time on or around water and because of this I have regular encounters with swans.

THE aspen is, in my opinion, one of our most attractive native trees.

I WAS travelling up the Shannon on my boat the other day. It was a stretch of river I hadn’t been on for a few years and one thing that struck me was the increase in the number of cormorants.

I’M just back from a short break on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. I was staying in a friend’s seaside apartment on the Costa Blanca. That bit of coast is a concrete jungle.

MAY is the high point of the year for the fly fisherman. People with no interest at all in fishing have heard of the mayfly and the excitement it inspires in fish and fishermen when it makes its annual appearance.

ON a fine spring day, there is nothing in the Irish countryside more splendid than a large, wild cherry tree in full blossom. There are two species of native wild cherry.

IT’S quite unusual to see butterflies on the wing in April in this country but I’ve seen quite in recent weeks.