Tag Archives: Ukraine

“The Cats Would Love This Thing!”

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(The audio podcast for this post can be found at this link.)

Today’s adventure:

Tim came from the carpet/counter/tile place today to take measurements for our new counters. He brought this way cool gizmo that uses a red laser to measure the dimensions of our counters. I was transfixed by this thing. I stood there, grinning in delight, as the machine beeped and zapped and laser-tagged our kitchen. “The cats would love this thing!” I told Tim. And “Ooooh! This is kind of like that machine that they use in the Mission Impossible movies to make those face masks!” (I started singing the Mission Impossible theme song.) Scott soon came in and stood next to me, equally fascinated. We stood in happy silence for a while – just watching the red dots move around our kitchen. “Boomer entertainment!” I said to Tim and he laughed.

After Scott left for work, I stayed there with Tim, watching him enter measurements and information into his tablet, and chatting with him. He had a Seahawks cap on and I told him I was feeling concerned about next season. He agreed with me that it was going to be different without Russell Wilson. We talked about other sports teams then – the new Kracken team – and Tim brought up the loss of our Sonics. “Were you even born when we lost our Sonics?!” I asked Tim – he looked too young to know anything about the Sonics. He laughed and said he was around and he remembered.

He asked me if I’d been raised in this area and I gave him a little of my history. Then I asked him if he’d gone to school locally – he said he’d been born in Kazakhstan, actually, and had come to the United States as a boy. His grandmother had been German and his grandfather Russian – they’d met in a concentration camp during WWII and had escaped to Kazakhstan at some point. From there, his parents had come to Washington State. He shared that he was married to a woman of Ukrainian heritage. I asked him if she still had family in Ukraine and he said that she did. We talked about the trauma of the latest war and the insanity of it.

Tim finished feeding information into his tablet and packed up the cool laser gizmo. I asked him if I could get his picture and write a public post about meeting him today, and he gave me permission.

We wished each other a good day, and he left to go to his next lucky customer.

There are some really nice people in this world. There are also some really cool machines that beep and play laser-tag with kitchens.
-Karen Molenaar Terrell

The Intrepid Little Sunflower

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(The audio podcast for this post can be found at this link.)

Recent events in the world have made me think about my irrepressible, intrepid little sunflower of two years ago. I’m thinking it might be time to retell that story…

(Originally published on July 13, 2020.)
One happy story has emerged from the Slug Battles this summer: The Story of the Intrepid Little Sunflower.

The slugs and snails have been voracious this year. When my little sunflowers first sprouted I covered them every night with jars. When they outgrew the jars I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and go on Slug Patrol – looking for any snails or slugs that might be chowing down on my sunflower youngsters (in the morning I would take the slugs and snails out to our wetland – what I’ve dubbed my “Snail and Slug Refuge” – and ask them to please stay down there). Eventually I started wrapping copper tape around the bottom of the sunflowers’ stems and that seemed to work pretty well – UNTIL one morning I found a slug or snail had chomped through the stem of one of the sunflower youngsters and the top three inches were hanging from the bottom three inches by mere threads. I tried to tape it together, but that didn’t work well. Finally, I pulled the top part off and – finding I didn’t have it in me to toss it in the compost – I put it in a little bottle filled with water and put it on top of a book case, and waited for nature to take its course.

But the little sunflower did not die. In fact, it appeared to me that it even grew a few inches.

A couple weeks went by and the leaves started turning yellow. It was obvious to me my little sunflower teenager needed nutrients. On impulse, I put about half an inch of soil in the bottom of the bottle and made sure the bottom of the sunflower stem touched the soil – I hoped the plant would somehow suck up the nutrients it needed – maybe it would grow roots? I wasn’t sure how that worked – but it seemed possible to me.

And today when I looked over at the sunflower teenager he seemed to have grown six inches overnight! I looked at the bottom of the bottle and there were roots in there!

I planted him in a planter out on the deck. Right now he is out there, straight and getting taller, and waving happily in the breeze at me.

(Originally published on September 13, 2020.)
You may remember the story about the intrepid little sunflower who was sawed in half by a slug earlier in the summer and grew new roots in a bottle. I transplanted her to a pot and put her out on the side of the house by her sister – where she’d originally been when she was attacked in the infamous Slug Wars. She thrived and grew out there and now she’s blooming!

Because she’s in a pot I was able to move her away from the dark background of the house for a photo of her in the sunlight. Check it out…

(Here’s a photo history of the Intrepid Little Sunflower.)
-Karen Molenaar Terrell

Ukraine: Field of Sunflowers and a Nightingale’s Song

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a field of gold sunflowers
Ukraine’s national flower
tenacious, unbending,
showing the irrepressible power
of beauty and joy that grows
beyond boundaries
grows beyond war

the song of a nightingale
Ukraine’s national bird
uplifting, soaring, free-sailing
singing a song heard
beyond boundaries
over battles
above the clamor of war
-Karen Molenaar Terrell

A Ukrainian woman, a Russian tennis champion, a Russian hockey star, 13 Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island, and the president of Ukraine have emerged as heroes in the last week. We see all of them confronting the world’s schoolyard bully – sometimes with sorrow, sometimes with anger, and always with unwavering courage. I pray for them, for the people of Ukraine, and for the Russian soldiers, too, who don’t want to be there – who were told by their commanders that they were going on “training exercises,” never wanted to be part of an invasion, and now just want to go home.

“Bloodshed, war, and oppression belong to the darker ages, and shall be relegated to oblivion.”
– Mary Baker Eddy

“Love for mankind is the elevator of the human race; it demonstrates Truth and reflects divine Love…” –
Mary Baker Eddy


sunflower and bee




This is Not Hearsay

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Note: When someone admits, on national television, that he tried to get favors from foreign governments – that is a primary source – that is not “hearsay.”

Just thought I should point that out. In case anyone was wondering.

Alrighty. Carry on then.

Trump says China should investigate Bidens.

Trump admits to talking about the Bidens with Ukraine.