Sunflower House Saturday

I heard of something fantastic a while back...a house made of sunflowers.
Considering I wouldn't mind my entire house being made of greenery, it sounded right up my alley. Anyway, the concept is more along the lines of a playhouse for kids. Once I started looking into it, I found that it is quite the common summertime hideout for kids from here to there. I had never heard of this before but seriously...google it. All kinds of articles and references!
It appeared this natural playhouse could be as simple or as complex as you desire. And, of course, I automatically am drawn to the most complicated of approaches! But, I figured that since this was our first try, we could start simple this summer. :)
We had a spot in our backyard where our playhouse has been located...but it has been quite a while since the kids had any interest in that playhouse so we decided to pass it on to a little cousin and use the prime real estate for planting our Sunflower House!
Hoping we were still early enough in the summer to be successful, we set aside a Saturday morning to get it all going. The morning's errands ended up taking more time than planned and sunflower seeds were surprisingly difficult to come by so we ended up heading into the backyard in the early afternoon. JC got going on prep work while the kids rested and, moving the earth around in the chosen spot, he discovered huge blocks of concrete planted in our yard from old planters we had torn out not long after we moved in to the house. When he started digging them out, he accidentally discovered our sprinkler system in a rather abrupt and surprising manner. Meaning...

Sunflower House got pushed back a bit for Broken Pipe.
JC did an amazing job of jumping right in and setting everything right.

The kids watched.

I helped.

And, after everything was good to go, the kids helped fill in the hole with a bit of their play sand to take up some room before we piled the dirt back on top.
Good helpers.

Finally, we got the land all level and all set for planting.

While things got finished up, James gave me a moment for a picture.

Then, he put his shirt on his head and said, 'Now I'm Jesus.'
Tell me you wouldn't take a picture.

By the way, I feel to note that this day was rare and gorgeous. It had been over one hundred degrees all week, maybe even for two weeks prior. But this Saturday, we stayed in the eighties, the EIGHTIES, all day. It was spectacular. And the perfect day for planting a playhouse. And if you're going to break a pipe and have to do a repair, it was a wonderful day on which to do it! You know, because I did so much of the work...

This picture is actually from the following night when JC took James out of the kitchen where we were having dinner with Grandma Teri so he could throw his fit in the playroom instead of at the table. Within a few minutes, all was quiet. We found this:

I blame it on the hard work of the day before.

After work a couple days later, JC ran out back to water our little sunflower seeds and I discovered this happening instead:
baseball practice

But they did eventually get down to business.

Here's to hoping we have something to show for it in a few weeks!
If it doesn't come up this year, I will most definitely plan ahead and be sure we have one for next summer!
But, for now, let's keep our fingers crossed!