UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CHURCH OF SARASOTA, 3975 FRUITVILLE ROAD, SARASOTA FL 34232, TEL. 941-371-4974
  • Home
  • Visitors
    • Frequently Asked Questions
    • Virtual Guestbook
  • Sundays
    • Upcoming Services
    • Directions
    • Previous Services >
      • Making of Virtual Church
    • Music Program >
      • Our Choir >
        • Videos for rehearsal
      • Schedule of Musicians
      • Our hymns
    • Sermon Archive (Pre-Covid) >
      • Sermon Archive 2020
      • Sermon Archive 2019
      • Sermon blog 2019
      • Sermon Archive 2014-2018
      • Sermon Archive 2011-2013
  • Pledge Campaign
  • Our Church
    • Directions
    • Newsletter >
      • Newsletters 2023
    • Calendar
    • Minister and Staff
    • From the Heart of the Minister
    • Rev. Roger Fritts Minister Emeritus
    • Architecture
    • Archives - Church History
    • Art Gallery in Lexow Wing
    • Arts Council
    • Authors' Showcase
    • Board of Trustees
    • Breeze Directory >
      • Breeze Tutorials
    • Brief History
    • Church Documents >
      • Annual Meeting
    • Community Ministers
    • Committees
    • From the Garden Gate
    • Giving
    • Korond Partner Church >
      • Korond Updates
      • The Village of Korond, Transylvania
      • Our Relationship with the Korond Congregation
      • The Ministers and Their Family
    • Members' Corner
    • Member Directory
    • Multimedia Guidelines
    • Scams
    • Thanksgiving Photos
    • UUs in the News
    • Valentines Luncheon
    • Volunteer Opportunities
    • Zoom
  • Children
    • Religious Education Overview >
      • Nursery
      • Elementary- Faithful Journeys
      • Youth Group- Riddles and Mysteries
    • RE News
    • RE Calendar
    • Photo Gallery >
      • Family Events
    • Meet our Staff and Teachers
  • Social Justice
    • Welcome Justice Seekers
    • Building a Culture of Inclusion
    • UUSC - UU Service Committee >
      • Ukraine response
    • Racial Justice Program >
      • Racial Justice Events
      • Racial Justice Initiatives
      • Manasota Anti-Racism Coalition
      • RJ Glossary
      • RJ Resources
      • The 8th Principle
    • Remembrance Project
    • GREEN TEAM PAGES >
      • Green Solutions
      • Eating Sustainably
      • Veg Restaurants
      • Farmers Markets
    • Reproductive Rights
    • Activist Corner >
      • FedStateLocalContacts
      • Gun Control Activism
    • Community Partners
    • Fair Trade Program >
      • What is Fair Trade?
    • Justice in Action >
      • Get out the vote rally
    • Volunteer
  • Adult Programs
    • Bridge for Fun
    • ChaliceGroups >
      • Sample Session Outlines
    • Cinema Conversations
    • Death Cafe
    • Forum >
      • Forum Archive
    • Garden Crew
    • Great Decisions Group
    • LGBTQ
    • Men's Groups
    • Mindfulness-Based Human Flourishing
    • Tai Chi
    • Women's Book Club
    • Women's Discussion Group
    • Zen Study Group
  • Contact
  • Annual Meeting 2023

Lo, the earth awakes again

3/24/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
​"Lo, the earth awakes again" begins the Unitarian Universalist version of the traditional Christian Easter hymn.  It is a hymn that even a UU congregation can sing lustily, and it is one of my favorites.  When Diane and I lived in Vermont "lo the earth awakes again" had special meaning as by Easter, crocuses were poking up their purple and yellow heads (sometimes through the snow, left), and if we were lucky, daffodils were just beginning to flower.

Picture
Diane and I have been in Sarasota for 23 years now, and we still miss the Vermont spring flowers and flowering shrubs, but we do have our Florida version of spring to help compensate.  Our Sarasota landscape is dotted with gold trees, pink orchid trees and oak trees sporting their bright spring green coats.  Spring comes to the UUCS campus as well.  The aforementioned oak trees turn bright green, the flame vine at the northern Memorial Garden gate welcomes one to the garden with its bright orange flowers, red Easter Lilies line one of the garden pathways, right. We even have an “Easter cactus” in bloom - it didn’t bloom at Christmas but is now.  And of course,  our UUCS Memorial Garden spring colors benefit from the numerous orchids, below, that dot all corners, hanging from the fence around the pond and from locations on various trees.

Picture
The last two lines in the aforementioned UU hymn captures my feelings about a Florida spring:
   "How our spirits soar
         and sing,
    How our hearts leap
​         with the spring! "

And maybe, just maybe, by next Easter, UUCS will be “in person”, and we can gather together and sing as one voice “Lo, the earth awakes again.”  Wouldn’t that be nice!

0 Comments

Gardening by Zoom

3/10/2021

0 Comments

 
PictureSeedlings pulled by Dick Happy
I was in our car in the parking lot of the Venice Community Center, waiting for Diane and my second vaccination shots. I was also participating by phone on a Zoom meeting of the UUCS executive committee as I wanted to be sure to fulfill my role as church treasurer.  Being “thoroughly modern Richard”, I found I could do it by smart phone. Our car inched forward in the vaccination lane, and I could see a technician approaching, needle in hand.  I immediately hit my phone’s “mute button” - I certainly didn’t want the rest of the executive committee to hear me howling in pain from the forthcoming “jab”. “This will just burn a bit,” said the technician with a smile. She stabbed, I flinched, but of course I could barely feel it. We pulled into the fifteen minute “wait to see if you are having a problem” line, I unmuted and continued my participation in the meeting.

“I like this idea of participating in a meeting by Zoom,”I said to Diane on our way back to Sarasota. “Gardening by Zoom”, maybe?” (Diane is chair of the Grounds Crew.)

“Nope,” she said. “Your physical presence is needed. It is Golden Rain Tree seedling season and you are very good at pulling those ubiquitous little guys out of the ground. They are running amok”. 

Really? Running amok? Is that some gardening term? But I knew better than to complain and on the way home we stopped at Church. I jumped from the car, flexed my jabbed arm and proceeded to pull one hundred seedlings from the memorial garden. “Running amok” indeed!

0 Comments

Return of the Monarchs

3/3/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
Return of the monarchs?  Sounds like a Netflix television series, doesn’t it, but we are hoping for butterflies, not kings and queens. We had planted milkweed - which monarch butterflies love - behind the church kitchen porch a number of years ago, hoping to attract the lovely orange and black insects. During the first year or two we had success, one year producing 13 caterpillars, feeling like midwives as we watched them go thorough the whole process from egg laying to beautiful butterflies.  More recently, our luck has not been as good, as some years no monarchs were attracted at all. But this year our milkweed is flourishing, and we have seen monarch butterflies flitting about the flowers and have already discovered three caterpillars. 

A year ago our little church milkweed garden had no monarchs and, as the pandemic hit, there were no church people either as our church campus closed down. But maybe, just maybe, this year our church garden will produce beautiful butterflies and, as the pandemic eases and our membership gets vaccinated, people will be able to return to the campus as well. Butterflies and people - wouldn’t that be nice!

-Richard Happy

0 Comments

    ​From the Garden Gate

    Picture

    Authors:
    ​Diane and Richard Happy

    Picture
    Diane and Dick have been Sarasota Unitarian Universalists since 1997.  They recently moved to be near family.  Both had been active participants, holding a variety of church offices and serving on a number of church committees.

    Archives

    March 2021
    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    February 2019
    September 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

​Members Corner
Weekly CONTACT Newsletter
Church Calendar
Upcoming Services
Religious Education for Children and Youth
Serendipity Auction
​Social Justice
Green Team Pages
Art Gallery in Lexow Wing
Our association: the UUA
Find other UU congregations
Copyright © 2022 All Rights Reserved. Links are encouraged. Contact Admin for permission to publish.
Contact info:
3975 Fruitville Road, Sarasota FL 34232
Tel. 941-371-4974
Office hours are 10am to 2pm Tuesday - Friday

Click here for more contact information...
Thank you to our many volunteers who contribute to this website.
Most have no prior web editing experience. Weebly makes this easy, which is why
​we recommend Weebly to non-profits dependent on volunteers. Read more at Introduction to Weebly...