It’s only when you have what feels like a hot roll of barbed wire lodged in your throat that you realise just how often you have to swallow, otherwise you never have to think about it. And that’s how I’ve been for about 5 or 6 days now. I think it’s only the third time in my life that I’ve almost completely lost my voice.

I haven’t been able to get on with my garden work due to having this horrible throat infection because I just don’t have the energy required for digging up the old crazy paving path which is the next thing on the gardening agenda, and I don’t want to make myself any worse than I already am.

So I don’t have any before and after photographs to show you, but I did take one of some cyclamen in an old upside-down chimney pot, there are some old lobelias there too, I know I should have chucked them out but if there are some flowers still going I can’t bear to uproot them.

This chimney pot design has 6 ‘pockets’ around it which are supposed to stop your chimney from drawing smoke down into your house, but when you use them as planters they are handy for putting crocus bulbs in for some early spring colour or any plant with a nice trailing habit in the summer.