When it comes to helping with a flower festival it isn’t just a question of shoving some flowers into a vase. Oh, no! Blood, sweat, tears, research and discussion go into it, plus a lot of experimenting. However, I still love the challenge. The church’s ‘Beginnings’ flower festival was no exception: to me this said, "Tenerife," as the move to the island in 2007 was definitely a new beginning for Phil and myself. I love the artistic challenge these shows require and the main one was to prepare for it all in limbo!

I was invited to decorate a windowsill in the Copper Beech Room. Veronica took the measurements for me; I also found a good photograph of the arched window among John Butterworth’s internet photos – showing the building work in progress – and I then made a mock-up of the shelf. Tin cans of varying sizes were used, with packaging to cover them. I used dried flowers grown on the island and broke off bits of cactus to dry. I love spray-painting and painted curly, dried leaves from my stralitzia (Bird of Paradise) plant: the contorted and weird shapes were transformed with the colours.

I also wanted to include the shape of Mount Teide – the summit of our volcanic island – as an outline for the over-all design.

At first I thought I’d use bamboo sticks, but in the end I did some finger knitting, using raffia. Multi-coloured paints were sponged on to the raffia. I think I might be quite good at graffiti, but I haven’t yet tried that!

We stumbled across a local craft fair on our holiday in Gran Canaria, where I found a wooden cut-out of Tenerife to use on the display: that saved me a lot of searching. The little straw hats were on sale for Canarian Day in May. (This day sees the islanders dressed in national costume: next year I’m determined to buy a full costume for myself and join in the special events in Santa Cruz. Hopefully, I’ll join in some of the dances too.)

I searched the internet, took photographs and even enlisted the local Tourist Office to help find interesting facts and pictures showing the non-tourist aspects of Tenerife. I think I should receive commission for any increased tourism to the island!

The correos (post office) caused me heartache when sending the parcel containing my flowers, foliage and equipment. It was deemed to be too long, in spite of having successfully travelled in the opposite direction last year! A solution was found, ash from the Icelandic volcano had subsided and everything arrived at Joyce Rae’s house intact. Phew, was I relieved about that!

My new knee stood the pace well and my ever-trusty friend Viv helped with tailoring my blue paper tablecloth to represent Tenerife’s sky. We worked in tandem and, as a non-flower arranger, she followed the instruction of, "Copy me." I was glad to see the design come into life.

I hope you read through some of the literature on the table: perhaps it will inspire you to take a holiday and visit the ‘other Tenerife’ which I know and love.

My dream still exists to start a flower club in the Canaries and, who knows, we might even organise our own flower festival one day. Now there’s a thought. You would, of course, all be invited!