IT WAS a beautiful summer day and my task was to take a group of 8 to 12 year olds on a nature walk as part of the Lough Ree Environmental Summer Festival.

The buddleia bushes in my garden have just come into flower. There are two of them and they’re not very big because I only planted them a few years ago. The reason I did so, despite the fact that they are a slightly unfashionable shrub, is to attract butterflies.

A few weeks ago on this page I mentioned the mysterious slaughter of my hens, writes Dick Warner

I was out with my machete and gardening gloves attacking briars and nettles that were threatening to engulf the young trees and shrubs I had planted in the wilder end of my garden. I call this end of the garden The Wood, which is a little grandiose because it’s too small to be a real wood.

THE window of the study in which I write looks out on a 10-acre meadow. While it’s not quite ‘unimproved grassland’ it’s also not managed intensively and is rich in meadow wild-flowers. 

I was invited to spend a weekend fishing on Lough Mask, based in the charming Co Galway village of Clonbur. I jumped at it because, despite a lifetime spent fishing all over the country, I had never fished for the famous wild brown trout of Mask.

I HAVE a habit, perhaps a rather morbid habit, of stopping to examine birds and animals that have been killed on the roads around my home. 

THE OTHER evening I took a group of about 50 people for a nature walk along the banks of the River Liffey as part of the Newbridge Junefest. 

I AM living in the middle of a murder mystery, writes Dick Warner.

LAST WEEK I was sitting in my canoe bailing out rain water when a large and beautiful insect floated by on the river --- a mayfly.