I have been busy – honestly!!

Well, here we are again!  Time to show you  some shots of our garden.  I have been spending quite a bit of time pottering around it and the flowers are now coming out a treat!

The strawberry pots are blooming and producing our first crop of strawberries.

The irises are very majestic and magnificent.

The foxgloves are home to the bumble bees.

The peony flowers are so big and blousey.

And the canterbury bells are the tallest I have ever seen them!

So  from pots…

to paths…

to rocky areas…

and golden birds…

to hooking!

The backs have been carefully sewn.

The flowers positioned and embellished.

But why so many brooches?

I am making them to raise some money for the Sun Shine School in Israel.  This is a small Christian school in the Arab area just outside Jerusalem.  The teachers have 59 children from 14 different nationalities all aged between 2 and 6 years.  The children are taught in English and are very bright and cheery, despite the physical size of the school.  It is in the ground floor flat of a small building.  The newest teacher has just graduated from Cambridge and she looks after 6 little 3 year olds in what was the stock cupboard!  If I had been living out there I would have helped in the school, but I am not, so all I can do to help is fund raise and that is what I am doing!  I am very grateful to Lucy of Attic 24, who has let me use her posy pattern.  Sun Shine goodies will soon be packaged and ready to go to their first venue.  Brooches, cards, note-lets, sewing kits and eventually a series of little books where a bear visits the sites of Israel!  Now where did that idea come from………??