MARGARET KNIGHT

508-627-8894

(margaret02539@yahoo.com)

Monday, the last day of the summer, was a perfect summer day with blue skies, warm temperatures and water still swimmable. The autumn equinox brings us into the season of change. The blueberry bushes and beetlebung trees have started to turn red already. The Jerusalem artichokes in my garden are eight feet tall and just starting to bloom, which means the tubers are about ready — nearing the end of the harvest.

On summer’s last weekend, a substantial percentage of Chappaquiddick’s population was off-Island attending weddings. For one, Roger Becker and Claire Thacher traveled to Knoxville, Tenn., to celebrate the marriage of their son Louis, who grew up on Chappy, to Rachel McCord. Also from the Island were Margot (Louis’ sister), and friends Liz Villard and Kate and Anna-Liza Villard-Howe. The couple is on honeymoon in the Caribbean, after which they will return to their apartment across the street from the Boston Garden. Louis works at Ebsco Publishing in Ipswich, and Rachel is completing her work on a doctorate in biophysics at Harvard.

My family was among a dozen Chappaquiddickers at the wedding of Fae Kontje-Gibbs to Buck Reidy at Fae’s family’s Sunny Slope Farm in Alton, N.H. They exchanged vows at the edge of a hillside field, with us witnesses sitting on hay bales, lawn chairs or on one of the patchwork quilts made by Fae and her cadre of sewers in the week before the wedding. The quilts were strung up on a line above the stone wall next to where the vows took place, and after the ceremony we laid them out in a patchwork of family and friends to share our picnics. Weddings in general have become very sophisticated events, but this one’s simplicity reminded me of ones in the 1970s.

Cape Pogue Pond’s osprey “Bea” finally took off south on Sept. 14, traveling for 43 hours straight and landing on an airport runway on Cat Island in the Bahamas. She traveled 1,212 miles at an average speed of 28 mph. All this is known because Bea is one of the osprey carrying a transmitter attached for Rob Bierregaard’s migration studies. Bea had never gone more than a couple of miles from her home nest before taking off on her solo flight. You can read more about the Vineyard osprey on Rob’s Web site which you can find by googling “osprey migration.”

In what has become an annual tradition, the community center will screen films from the recent Martha’s Vineyard International Film Festival on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 3 and 4. Richard Paradise, festival director, provides the films as a thank-you to the 50 volunteers who helped during the festival. Mary Spencer coordinated the volunteers, including Chappy residents Pat Rose and John Ortman, Nancy Slate, Paul Cardello, Judy Buss, Sidney Morris and myself. Mary will provide a “bottomless” pot of clam chowder, vegetarian lasagna and beverages; others can bring salads and desserts to share. Films will run continuously from noon to 11 p.m. on Saturday, and from noon to 7 p.m. on Sunday, all free, and open to any Chappy resident and their guests as well as film festival volunteers. Look for a schedule of the screenings at the community center, and on the community center Web site.

The third annual Living Local Harvest Festival will be held Oct. 2 and 3 with many events that aim to increase sustainable living on Martha’s Vineyard.

The Fest starts on Friday at 7:30 p.m. with a discussion on The Next Generation of Martha’s Vineyard at the Grange Hall in West Tisbury. On Saturday, Oct. 3 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. the festival continues at the Agricultural Hall with events including forums on energy, food, waste and natural resources; demonstrations on beekeeping, composting, organic gardening basics, and preserving food; activities for kids including pumpkin carving, worm box building and feltmaking; a daylong farmers’ market; a hay bale maze; cider pressing; goat shearing; a pie eating contest; and the Antique Power Show. There will be live music, including an opening ceremony at 9 a.m. with the Black Brook Singers. From 6 to 10 p.m. there will be a community potluck featuring live Island music. Bring a dish that feeds six and your own plate and utensils.

The next first-and-third-Wednesday potluck at the Chappy Community Center will be Oct. 7 at 6 p.m., hosted by Annie Heywood.

The three old apple trees that grow in our back yard, that were here when I started building the house in 1973, have more apples than I’ve ever seen. The deer are having a daily feast from the drops, and Lime, one of the angora goats living here now, is happy to eat an apple if I hold it for him. Goats have only bottom teeth in front — an odd evolutionary feature that makes it not hurt so much when Lime starts biting me in his excitement at the sight of food.

It seems to be a great year for apples off-Island, too. On the way back from the wedding, we stopped in Sterling, at my family’s house, where my sister Dorothy was in the midst of managing a huge harvest from the apple trees at the edge of the yard, that are part of the neighbor’s commercial orchard. The macs were the size of big grapefruit and, with the help of family and friends, Dorothy had already filled one bay of the garage with bags of apples. She’s been busy distributing apples to friends and coworkers, for which she often receives applesauce and apple pies in thanks.