Narcissus February Gold is as the name suggests golden yellow and reliably early to flower. When lit by bright winter sun there is an attractive contrast between the deeper yellow of the trumpet and the translucence of the petals.
 It's obscure how this variety came into being but it's generally agreed to be a cross of two wild species: N. cyclamineus and N. pseudonarcissus.

 "Tommies" (Crocus tommasinianus) are sometimes called the Woodland Crocus and they seem to like the part sun/shade conditions in the garden. There were already some dotted around when I moved here; I've added to them and they're multiplying in patches along with the Narcissus February Gold. Both these early flowers attract the early pollinators when the sun is out.

 A noteworthy event: the first bee I have seen in the garden this year.

 The fluffy seedheads of Clematis vitalba were prolific when I took a walk in Sussex last week. Old Man's Beard is one of the common names of this plant, I remember being interested/amused by this description when I was very little.
 One of the nice things about writing this diary is that it prompts me to research the subjects in greater detail. For example I knew C. vitabla is also known as Traveller's Joy but I didn't know that it was John Gerard the sixteenth century herbalist who noted its habit "of decking and adorning waies and hedges, where people trauell" and goes on to say "thereupon I have named it the Traueilers Iioe."

 These are Crimson Flowered Broad Beans. I bought a packet of them a couple of days ago at Seedy Sunday, the annual seed fair held in Brighton. I grew this variety in the garden several years ago (as seen in the second photo) and will try some on the allotment this year.
 They date back to at least the 1700s and would have disappeared from cultivation were it not for a lady called Rhoda Cutbush a couple of centuries later. She grew them all her life in Kent as did her father before her. In 1978 she donated her last three or four beans- perhaps the last in existence- to the Heritage Seed Library who cultivated them and revived the Crimson Flowered Broad Bean.
 Seedy Sunday is part of the movement to nurture and protect open source seeds, one of the most important political issues of our time. A lecture I attended made a telling point: through a series of mergers and acquisitions three multinational companies now supply around sixty percent of the world's seeds and sixty percent of the world's agro-chemicals.
 In contrast to open source they are using patent law to copyright seed production. This is already happening with cultivars developed using traditional cross breeding techniques and is even more applicable to GM methods. If you can copyright the food chain you can control it; the implications for food sovereignty and biodiversity are worrying. So thank you Rhoda Cutbush for the Crimson Flowered Broad Bean.

 Note to self: should include more trees in this journal...

Today was not the day to do anything on the allotment.