Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ

Preached by Rev. Ree Hale
May 27, 2007
Text: Acts 2: 1-21

As a child I didn’t know that Memorial Day had to do with war. My grandmother, mother, older brother and I would walk to get the bus (or my aunt would come get us in her car) and we’d go downtown to Schenectady, New York, to the parade route. It was very near the cemetery where my grandfather and my mother’s older sister who died at age 14 were buried. My grandmother’s mother was buried there also. Continue Reading »

UP FROM’THE MUD-ABUNDANT AMPHIBIANS
By Jim Hale (from Snow Fleas to Snowflakes: Notes from a Natural World, p. 30-31).

This is the latest essay in our monthly series featuring the writing of ORUCC member Jim Hale, who wrote nature columns for the Friends of the Arboretum Newsleaf newsletter for many years. These writings are reprinted with his permission.

Tiger salamanders are not creatures that usually bring joy to the person who finds one. Homely, slow-moving, slimy-skinned adult salamanders give a first impression that they are lizards, but they’re not. They are true amphibians adapted to live both in the water and on land, although their terrestrial habitats must be moist.
Wisconsin has eight species of salamanders. The tiger sala­mander (Ambystoma tigrinum) is one of our largest. It reaches about 13 inches in length, half of which is tail. It is found over most of the southern half of the state, except for the driftless area of the western counties. The species is widely distributed over the central United States.
Continue Reading »

Preached on May 20th by the Rev. Winton Boyd
Text: John 21:15-19

I know the last snow storm we had occurred on April 11, because that was the day I drove to Chicago’s O’Hare airport to pick up guest pastor Joerg Utpatel. In the morning before leaving, I was cursing the skies and watching the heavy snow cause the lilies outside our kitchen window droop and in the process, crush our bird feeder.

Needless to say, our guest was surprised (I believe it was unseasonably warm in the 80’s when he left his hometown in northern Germany.) However, because he was here for almost a month, as we drove around Southwest Wisconsin, we kept watching the fields and trees. A little green here, a few buds there. A tulip here and a bit more green the next day. Finally, seemingly overnight – BOOM – the ash trees on Black Oak Drive where we live popped out and what had been an airy canopy of branches was suddenly a thick, brilliant green canopy of leaves. Continue Reading »

Preached by Rev. Tammy Martens on May 13, 2007
Text: Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Before moving to Madison, I served at a very small rural church west of Reedsburg, Wisconsin. My first spring there I decided I wanted to grow a garden. I didn’t have very much experience with gardening, but felt inspired or maybe culturally pressured because everyone had gardens and worked and talked about their gardens all the time. So, I had the ground dug up that was behind our house and thus began my work as a gardener. Like I said, I really had very little knowledge of gardening and so I didn’t test the soil, I didn’t’ use any fertilizer, I just planted seeds. Well, while I was planting, I started to uncover pieces of glass and all sorts of garbage, and soon discovered that where I was planting my garden had been where previous tenants had burned their trash. I had to admit that I was a bit discouraged, but I went ahead and planted some seeds and some plants but really didn’t know what would happen.

Continue Reading »