The Sunflower House Activities Update for Grandparents and Their Grandchildren

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Garden activities for grandparents and their grandchildren are fun, aren’t they? They’re not always easy or convenient, especially for those of us in the Sandwich Generation as we deal with the issues of caring for elderly parents as well! Not to mention any of us, who shall remain nameless, hmmmm, with a 5th metatarsal fracture! With all of that going on, I was beginning to think we’d never get our special summer project –The Sunflower House – going. But we DID!

I had gone over the day before to babysit, complete with trowel, but the weather was too stormy, my foot was too sore, and they had too much schoolwork, so we didn’t try to plant seeds. The next day, I went over again, unexpectedly and at the last minute. I forgot to make sure I had the trowel, but we finished the schoolwork early and the rainstorm that was predicted had disappeared. I thought, “Ah ha."

“Would you boys liked to plant sunflower seeds to grow the Sunflower House we read about?” I asked. All three enthusiastically said YES! The only problem was the trowel, which my middle grand-twin solved by discovering I had left it behind the day before. Hooray! Out we trooped.

After walking around the yard to find just the right spot, we picked a place with minimal doggy visits, maximum sun, and only semi-hard dirt. Sharing the trowel, each boy dug down an inch and dropped in a seed. With the dirt harder than they thought, one, who was worn out from soccer, quit after three holes. The other two stuck with me for about five holes. Then grandma helped with the rest.  You should have seen us out there, them in their  flip flops or bare feet and me in my tennis shoe on one foot and fracture boot on the other.

I’m not going to tell you it’s the best garden in the world. With slightly-tired grandkids and a sore foot, it is a bit crookedy and not well weeded. We did, however, mark off the garden with twigs and string, and what I thought at first was an uber-too-tiny Sunflower House should actually turn out quite nice. They had fun, I had fun, and hopefully we'll all have fun with it this summer. We also had a nice time practicing the last of their Awana Bible verses:

…The Son of Man must be lifted up. That everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life. John 3:14-15

Not only that, my senior mom – who is the real gardening expert around here – and I found a nice spot at our house for “the grandma version” of the Sunflower House, complete with soft dirt. So, hopefully, we’ll have a set at each house AND send seeds to my long distance grandkids so they can have a west coast version. Then we can all have fun talking Sunflowers and Sunflower houses all summer long. Talk about fun ways for grandparents to stay in touch and close to grandchildren when living far away!

All in all, a good time was had by all, fun gardening activities for grandparents and grandchildren, near and far, took place and will keep taking place, and lots of special family memories were made, many of which we photographed to share with my senior mom and you.  Definitely a great day for this Sandwich Generation granny nanny and her grandkiddies. Are you going to give the Sunflower House a try this summer? Or do you have other fun gardening activities planned for grandparents and grandchildren? We'd love to hear about them. 🙂