Fun With Sunflowers

I've always wanted to build a sunflower house with the kids, but with so little flat land in our yard (actually no flat land whatsoever), it hasn't seemed very feasible. But this year we cleared out this little area way up in the corner of our yard and it's pretty flat up there, so I marked out an area and we planted a sunflower house! You can find instructions to make one at several places on the internet, but here's one article. We decided to alternate taller and shorter varieties of sunflower, with the tall ones being the kind with good eating seeds, and the shorter ones being the pretty crimson ones. We planted vining sweet peas around the edges, and we can make trellises out of string across the top for a roof if they climb high enough up the sunflowers. I'll hopefully have more photos to share as it grows!

I also spent most of today getting that entire new garden spot trowelled into rows and mounds and planted pole beans, tomatoes, chard, beets, pumpkins, melons, and a small herb garden there! All of the seeds we planted in the back in the last week or so are sprouting already, so I can't wait for the new front garden to take root as well! We ate our first salad from our garden tonight, since one of the lettuces survived being uprooted by the cats and is quite large and lovely. Yummm! Here's to a summer of even more fresh veggies, and a shady sunflower house to enjoy them in.