Lawrence Hall, HSG
Who Invaded Us?
A few disconnected
thoughts
Sunflowers are one of my favorite plants and they are
easy to grow. If you buy a package of natural seeds – not hybrids – they will
reseed themselves and you can have two crops of them in a season.
I save the heads for storing in paper bags – plastic
destroys them – in that famous Cool Dry Place (refrigerator) for sharing out
with the birds and squirrels during the winter.
Sunflowers are heliotropic, which means that they follow
the sun. Biologists employ long, polysyllabic words like “circadian” and “evolutionary
development” to explain why they do, but I still maintain that sunflowers
follow the sun because they want to. So there.
A fun fact, as Young Sheldon would say: sunflowers originate
in the Americas, and they were and are important to the First Nations as a
source of food, for the oil in them, and for medicine.
The Russians acquired sunflower seeds in trade, and
developed them as a commercial enterprise because of their nutritional value. The
Americans picked up on that and so sunflowers have become a big part of our
agriculture. Kansas is The Sunflower State and the sunflower is a symbol of
Ukraine.
If you till around in the InterGossip you can find methods
for processing sunflower seeds and using them for cheap, healthy snacks. Those packets
of sunflower seeds in the store are awfully expensive.
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In my little garden I have a child’s wading pool which not
only refreshes the bees but also serves as a nursery for frogs. In season you
can see the thousands of little frog eggs, each swaddled in its little bubble.
They progress from eggs to tadpoles and finally to frogs. Only a few make it to
adulthood, which is in the nature of the species.
A fun fact – the Old English / Anglo-Saxon word for tadpoles
is “polwygles,” which survives as “pollywogs.”
Bees can’t launch from water; they need a sturdier
surface and a leafy branch, changed every few days, is perfect.
Remember that small children can drown in only a few
inches of water, as can small pets, so be very careful.
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One of the many features of the Apple watch (made in Communist
China) is the flashlight. Really! If you skid the face up twice a number of
little symbols appear, including that of a flashlight. It’s not much of a
light, but if you’re in a (euphemism) when the power fails it’s enough of a
light for finding the roll of paper and then for finding the sink for
handwashing and then finding your way out. Further, because the light is already
strapped to your wrist it’s not going to fall into The Sacred Bowl of Our
People.
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A news service functionary in a rush to meet a deadline
could be forgiven for mixing up a picture of Ukrainian street dead with a
picture of American street dead.
We understand that the tyrant and never-got-over-it KGB
clerk Putin has conscripted thousands of poorly trained Russian kids to invade
neighboring Ukraine. And more than that, he has hired foreign mercenaries to
murder Russian kids if they fail to murder Ukrainians.
We don’t understand the why but we understand that this
is so.
But as for the American dead in our streets and schools
and parks and businesses, day after day, what is that about? Who invaded us?
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