Recently in Our Community Category

As you may have noticed our garden along Del Mar and Los Robles needs some attention. For the last several months many members of our church in the First Impressions Team, Sustainable Garden Team and the Carbon Ring have been brainstorming ideas on what to do with it. We came up with many possibilities and then settled on a plan. Our plan is to build a Sustainable Garden. 

What is a Sustainable Garden? First, it is a garden that does not use lots of water. Water is becoming more scarce in California and is moved thousands of miles to our location. To be responsible we need to remove plants that use lots of water to survive and replace them with low water use plants. Second, it is a garden that will help us live a sustainable life. If we use less water in the garden we will have water for drinking and other necessary uses. Also, we buy food that can be shipped thousands of miles raising the CO2 output into our air. If we cut down on that travel time we could reduce our carbon footprint. Using this criteria we came up with a plan. 

Our plan is to design a beautiful garden with indigenous native plants along Del Mar and Los Robles. These natives would take approximately one year to acclimate to our climate and then would only need water when very hot. Indigenous native plants belong in this climate and know how to adjust to this weather. They can be beautiful and bring butterflies and birds to our grounds. 

We would also re-plant the patio garden. This would be the garden where we would practice our eating closer to home. We plan to plant a vegetable and fruit garden. These crops would be used in our 3rd Sunday Lunches and our Green Project Lunches. 

This is a large project that we are committed to accomplishing and will take time, labor, and money. On September 15th we sent a grant application to the UUA Funding Program to ask for assistance. We told them our plan and hope to hear positive news within two months. In the meantime, we started our Green Project Lunches on the second Sunday in September to raise our own funds. (There will be a Green Project Lunch every second Sunday of the month.) By the end of November we will have a drawing of the plan for the garden. We will display it on the Sustainable Garden bulletin board in Throop Hall. The Sustainable Garden Team will continue to meet and move this project towards completion. 

Did you know about Rick's great idea? No? Well, Rick has devised a plan to sell most of the books now stored on the Throop Hall stage. There are thousands of books there. The plan is to create an online book store at half.com or amazon.com to sell the sellable books. This is a great idea for getting rid of the books on the stage and at the same time fund-raising for Throop Church. Yeah, Rick!

The catch is he can't do it alone. There are several steps in this process towards creating an online book store. First, we need to organize the books and move them to new storage quarters. Second, we need to label the books and storage boxes. Third, we need to enter them into the online book store. And finally, we need to package them and send them to their new owners. This will take a while to set up. 

However, with any large project there is a first step. Our first step is to organize the books. On Saturday, September 27th from 8:00 to noon we will be sorting through all of the books on the Throop Hall stage. We will separate them into sellable books and donation books. The sellable books will then be re-boxed and moved to a new storage area within the church. We need your help to accomplish this first task. Can you join us? We will be serving breakfast and provide plenty of cool drinks. The more of us there are the faster and easier this will be. Please let Brad know you can make it. He is the guru of book sorting. 

PLAN TO ATTEND!!!

THROOP CHURCH PICNIC
Saturday, September 6th from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM
At Tournament Park on the Caltech Campus

BBQ TIME! We will supply the veggies and fruit to make kabobs for barbecuing and drinks. Please bring a potluck dish to share and anything special for your kabob such as meat. If you can help with cutting our veggie and fruit Friday night prior to the picnic please contact Mary Jane at maryjaneholden@mac.com.

OLYMPIC GAMES! We will be playing games designed for all ages and abilities. Our plan is to form teams, have each team decide who will participate in which event, award points and medals to the most successful teams. Yeah! There will be Scrabble, Cards, Ultimate Frisbee, Water Balloon Toss, Potato Sack Relays, Watermelon Eating Contest, and more. If there are any particular games you would like to include please e-mail Kathleen at kathleenmcg@mac.com.

MUSICAL INTERLUDES! Dave Jones has agreed to lead our singing interludes. If there is a song that particularly appeals to you please let him know at mrblueguitar@sbcglobal.net.

ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES! Do you need a ride to the park or can you provide a ride to the park? Carol would like to assist anyone in need. Contact her at carol.rudisill@adelphia.net or 626-355-4285.

DIRECTIONS Click this pdf for directions to Tournament Park.
Throop Church Picnic Directions.pdf

We are trying a new type of newsletter here at Throop. Our newsletter will be recreated in the form of a blog. Some of us are not as familiar with blogs as others. In simple terms this is where we will be finding the information regarding Throop Church. The difference between this and the previous newsletter is at least two fold. First, all of the information of every newsletter will remain here in this blog. Instead of having 12 newsletters per year we will keep adding to this blog and send you e-mail reminders to come take a look at the most recent entries. Second, this newsletter/blog will be constantly updated. The latest information regarding the activities or events of Throop Church will be placed here on a regular basis. This is a new idea and we are testing it. Our goal is to have accessible information in a timely manner for our Throop community. We welcome you input to help promote our goal.