Firstly, many apologies for the delay in posting. Over the past week, we've been having major problems with our broadband, with it having an intermittent fault, the most frustrating kind, since just as we decide to call BT, service resumes, then the next day it's playing up again. Grrrrr.

Last weekend, we took the dogs over to the greyhound field near the old Severn bridge. Some pics attached. We hadn't been for a while and the dogs loved it, though of course their first thought on entering the flower filled meadow was to have a graze on the delicious grasses. It's quite strange seeing three dogs strolling through the field munching grass like a herd of leggy cows. We saw masses of butterflies, I took a picture of a Meadow Brown and we saw some Speckled Whites too, which were beautiful.

During the week, I've been gripped by the Tour de France - another outstanding race this year though with a high casualty rate, sadly.

On Thursday night, we went down to County Hall for a public meeting that had been set up to establish a "Friends of" group for the Council dog pound. Like many people involved in dog rescue I have ambivalent feelings about the pound. Running a stray dog service is a statutory part of the Council's responsibilities and Cardiff is unusual in having its own Dogs Home rather than contracting out the service. Dogs can be adopted from the pound, but do not generally have a homecheck first, may not be neutered and don't come with the same sort of support and aftercare that rescues generally provide. Lastly, and this is a dealbreaker for many, they kill many dogs.

So, I had ambivalent feelings. Is my voluntary effort better spent on working with rescues or should we encourage the dog pound to improve its standards? Eventually I decided to go along as I think the Council is to be commended for wanting to improve services. It was an interesting meeting and I will write more about the issues involved. You can link here to the Dogs Home website. I must admit it felt odd though to be back at County Hall, for the first time in a number of years.

On Saturday morning we went along to Roath Farmers Market (see website here). We bought some gorgeous tomatoes - a big selection of lovely shapes, sizes, colours. And the flavour!!! Just like home grown. On Saturday night, we had a tomato salad with a home made sage foccaccio, plus some courgette fritters (courgettes also from the market), and on Sunday, some local, free range pork from one of the stalls.

Sunday was a nice, sociable day. Our next door neighbours, Russ and Sarah, were celebrating Russ's 40th birthday party with a barbeque and open house party in the afternoon, so we went along and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Met some lovely people including a very nice couple, one half of whom went to the same 6th form college as Andrew, and whose parents live very close to Andrew's. Small world!