What follows are some cuttings from Gazette nature editorials in the year 2011:

January: We know where we live this winter for sure: This is New England, no doubt about it, the place where if you don’t like the weather, just wait a minute and it will change.

Mostly that change has alternated between snow and ice with a little cold rain and mud thrown in the middle for good measure. Familiar faces of friends and neighbors have disappeared inside enormous down jackets wrapped with thick scarves of fleece and wool like so many winter mummies. We know we have fingers and toes; we just can’t see or feel them right now.

March: Of all the harbingers of spring, there is one that evokes not a smile but a sense of sadness: The end of the community suppers.

The suppers have come to serve as lighthouses beckoning all to the safety of a shared meal and conversation. For this we give thanks. But we should also remember that the sight of ospreys hunting in our waters again, the croak of pinkletinks in the ponds and the coming return of our summer economy do not necessarily mean the realities of being hungry and alone have been erased.

April: Rain, rain go away — the familiar children’s rhyme runs through the mind this month. April showers? More like deluge with nearly five inches of rain dumped on the Island in a record storm that washed out roads and sent highway and emergency workers scrambling. Suddenly winter coats have been replaced by slickers and tall rubber boots, the better for fording puddles the size of small lakes on downtown streets and in driveways.

June: This is the traditional month for brides and on the Vineyard nature’s color palette is right in tune: Fields, woodlands and roadsides are dotted with white flowers of every description. Great drifts of daisies cascade down hillsides and across horse pastures, as if they were brushed into the landscape by some French impressionist. Creamy white viburnum has burst into bloom. Underfoot on woodland walks, tiny white flowers promise wild strawberries in the weeks to come.

Soon red, blue and yellow will be added to the color scheme as the Fourth of July draws near — geraniums and petunias in window boxes, cornflowers, coreopsis, day lilies and black-eyed Susans in the garden.

September: Fall arrived seven days ago by the calendar. It arrived this week for our own boys of summer as the Red Sox completed their ignominious slide. Here on the Vineyard, warm temperatures persist like some houseguest on vacation who has overstayed her welcome. Sweaters and socks are still folded away in drawers, waiting for that first snap of bracing cool air.

October begins tomorrow.

November: Pink and yellow roses persist on the white picket fencelines in downtown Edgartown, nodding bravely on gray days, their buds tightly furled against the chilly wind sweeping down narrow streets that seem suddenly empty and wide. Even the autumn bus tours have ended. It’s just us now, the roses seem to be saying, only the hardy Islanders left, so why don’t we brighten your day a bit?

December: Soon there will be sea ice forming on the shoreline and the gentle landscape will be transformed into an unforgiving frozen tundra that sends us scurrying indoors to shake the snow and ice from our jackets and make delicious hot soups for dinners by the fire while the wind howls outside. Soon, but not yet.