The weather has been beautiful this week and the garden looks great, with new flowers practically every day. The honeysuckle this year has done brilliantly. We planted it a couple of years ago - as one of a series of climbers that we hoped would soften the expanses of fencing round the garden. For the first couple of years, it was a real plodder, and really hasn't done very much, but this year, wow. It's put on a lot of growth both sideways and vertically and is smothered in buds, which are just starting to open. It's interesting with plants, how some seem to take a while to get into their stride while others get going straight away. I also have a theory that the two dismal summers we had last year and the year before were actually very good for our garden - in that we have a number of plants that are pretty immature and are still settling. Dealing with long, difficult droughts on clay soils would have put a lot of extra stress on young plants - the wet meant that they could take their time getting settled in without being under a lot of strain, and this year we are seeing the benefits of this, not just with the honeysuckle but with the other trees, shrubs and herbaceous perennials.

I went with my friend Paula up to Velindre Hospital (our local cancer hospital) on Thursday afternoon. She's going through chemo at the moment, and is having the sort that lasts for nearly 48 hours, so she goes on a Tuesday to have the process started via her PICC line, comes home with the drugs in a little bag she carts round for the next couple of days, then back on the Thursday to have it removed, have the line flushed through and so on. She's doing a bit better this time round, but is still feeling pretty tired and needing to take things easy. We were chatting to another patient there at the same time for the same process, and he was feeling remarkably unaffected by it, so much so that he was still working, through the process. It's interesting how it affects people very differently. Fortunately, she only has two more chemo sessions to go, and then she will hopefully be able to build up her strength a bit more.

Friday was a busy day. I drove down to Pontardawe in the afternoon for a planning meeting for Welsh Festival of the Horse. I'm responsible for the website for this event, and also the related Facebook page and Twitter feed. I do this contribution on behalf of GRW, who are organising the canine part of the event. You can see the link to the website on the sidebar of the blog.

Friday evening, we trundled into town for an evening of pleasure seeing Crowded House at the CIA. I've written before about how much their music means to both Andrew and myself. Sadly, there were some empty seats, but those who were there were highly appreciative. Andrew pointed out, looking round that there were far more people drinking coffee than beer, which does seem to reflect their demographic. CH have in any case been poster-boys for what can only be kindly described as "Dad-chic" with the look in general of a convention of geography teachers and on this occasion were well up to usual standard with the bass player wearing a bow tie (in that heat!) and Neil Finn wearing a jacket, slightly mismatching his trousers, and a very sober Oxford shirt. The only let-down was that Neil Finn had grown a small toothbrush moustache - and in some lights he looked as though a furry animal had come to rest on his face, or that he was channelling a Hitler impersonator, especially as he has a rather charming pudding basin hair cut, which sticks up progressively as he gets hotter and the gig gets livelier.

CH usually do a fairly stripped down set decor - this was the case with some fun lighting/slide effects and a few little teddy bears and glowing ducks dotted around the stage. No sign of the sheep we saw last time. Musically, they were on top form. They played a number of songs from their new album, plus a canter through their huge back catalogue. When you've been playing as long as they have, there's plenty of material to choose from, and they also had adapted a slightly looser, rockier style, letting the drummer unleash his inner John Bonham and Neil Finn having a cute little Korg synth set up by his mic stand, allowing for some fine, 60s style early Pink Floyd warblings at appropriate moments. All in all, we loved it, singing along enthusiastically to a huge number of songs. If you get the chance to see them on their current tour, I can wholeheartedly recommend although I loathe the venue more every time I go there, and wish deeply that someone would blow it up and start again.

Since then, the weekend has been pretty quiet with just the normal early morning dog walks to avoid the heat, various errands and I've been working on a presentation I'm doing at the end of the month to the all Wales dog warden group on some research I've been doing on microchipping of dogs. Talking of which, one of Andrew's very nice clients lent us the DVD of the film "Best in Show", from the same stable as Spinal Tap, about the world of dog showing. Well, it was gloriously, howlingly funny and also uncomfortably accurate about how some dog owners treat their woofs. I can wholeheartedly recommend it. On a similar note, I recently came across a blog that I must namecheck and have added it to the sidebar for your commendation. Bad Vestments is a collection of all that's gloriously wrong with ecclesiastical dress - if you love the church, and you love fashion, and you love vestments, and you love bitchy writing, then it's a must-see.