Our glorious, but cool, Deeside spring continues to laugh in the face of lockdown, as shown by the amelanchiar close to our back door and the blossom beginning to appear on our two pear trees (below), Conference on the left and Bon Chretien on the right. With luck they will avoid late frosts and give us a good crop this year. Ironically, our big problem at the moment is drought – there hasn’t been any substantial rain for many days – look at the dry compost in our runner bean pot.