Wednesday, August 20, 2008

The Sunflower Playhouse

If you are like me, you may have had all kinds of fun ideas of things you wanted to do with your kids before you even had any children. For me, one of those ideas was to grow a sunflower playhouse. You plant giant sunflowers in a square and they grow to become a "house" for kids to play in. Unfortunately, I got a late start on planting it because we were working on other outdoor projects like the garden. But sometime in June we (I mean Billy) dug out the area and I planted the sunflower seeds (plus Morning Glories to climb up the sunflower stalks) and a just few days later we had sprouts! Only three sides grew, however, because the 4th side was next to the fence and had bad soil.


As of yesterday some of the stalks were over 6 feet tall and the heads were on the cusp of blooming (I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've ever used the word "cusp". And possibly the last). Anyway, I was getting VERY excited.

But last night the sunflowers suffered a severe blow. A wicked thunderstorm blew in at 3 AM complete with high winds and hail. One entire "wall" of the house blew over. This side was lashed together by the Morning Glory vines so I think that's why it fell. The opposite side wasn't bound together so it withstood the wind. I was able to stand the fallen stalks back up again so hopefully the damage wasn't permanent.

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