TEN days ago a public meeting was held in a hotel in Galway to discuss the threat posed to Lough Corrib by the invasion of an alien pond weed called Lagarosiphon major.

THE big larch tree in the garden has been on my hit list for some time. Its roots were invading the vegetable plot and it was in the way of a new run and pond for ducks that I’m building. The other day I finally felled it.

THE other day I was driving slowly along a small country road when something caught my eye. There were large, bright yellow flowers growing in the verge that looked unfamiliar.

THE OTHER night I was checking the patio lights to see what species of moths had been drawn to them.

Dick Warner on the curious social lives of foxes.

ALREADY you can feel a touch of autumn in the air — a crispness in the mornings and a shortness in the evenings. There is a tall larch tree on the land that needs to be felled. It has outgrown its situation and its destiny is to provide logs for winter fires. But, seeing as it’s close to the vegetable patch, I’ll wait until most of the vegetables have been harvested before I cut it down.

I LIVE in the east Midlands and this part of the country has experienced the wettest June since proper records began in 1956.

ON THIS page last week I mentioned that I’m cleaning up an old hedgerow.

THE OTHER day I was trimming back a hedge that had grown unruly and was creating too much shade over part of my garden. It was a boundary hedge of native trees and plants and I would guess it was at least a couple of hundred years old so I was trying to treat it with some respect.

ON Wednesday, August 8, there was a sad story on RTÉ Radio’s News at One. It was the announcement that the Yangtze River dolphin was extinct.