Spring came this past week, finally, with all its interest for the senses. Chappaquiddick’s many late-leafing oaks still give the woods a wintery look. The honeysuckle and low bushes along the roadsides are covered with tiny vibrant green leaves, and the grass has a brilliant glow. The fragrant mayflowers, or trailing arbutus, can be found at the edges of dirt roads where there’s not too much sun.

When I was a little kid, on May Day my mother would send me out with little baskets of flowers for each of the neighbor ladies. We made the baskets out of purple construction paper and filled them with pansies and johnny-jump-ups. The ladies were so delighted that I was convinced at a very early age that you really can’t go wrong with flowers. I still enjoy bringing home a big bouquet of roses.

On a small island, everything that goes on seems to have a greater effect than in a place less circumscribed. We’ve certainly seen the extended and radiating effects of big storms in recent years, but it’s true about the small things as well. When someone paints a ring of daffodils around the bottom of a telephone pole, it can make a lot of people smile, which has a ripple effect through the whole population.

The next Chappy Community Center potluck supper will be on Wednesday, April 17 and is hosted by Tom Osborn. I hope that Tom will bring a pot of South Dakota mashed potatoes. Once you have a taste you will never be satisfied with any other. Tom’s signature is in the form of a depression on the top in the exact size and shape of a whole stick of butter that soaked into the potatoes as it melted.

Happy belated birthday to Harold Zadeh, who turned 65 on March 26. Sadly, that day also marks his retirement from firefighting duty in the Edgartown Fire Department. Harold has been a firefighter for nearly a quarter of a century, and for the last eight years served as the Lieutenant of Chappy’s Fire Pumper #3.

After extensive public input last summer, the transportation committee working on redesign of the Chappaquiddick Point has come up with a final design. This spring, a roundabout will be built where the traffic from the ferry, the waiting line, the main road, and the parking lot converge.

Despite all the cold, rainy, windy weather, we’ve crossed the line, first, into Daylight Saving Time and now, with the vernal equinox on Wednesday, into spring. Neither has made us feel particularly spring-like. Sometimes I feel as if the only harbinger of spring is the fact that I’m looking for one, as in the way that I’ve started tipping my head to look up at the still-empty osprey nest along my road.

I need to do some repairs under the ferry ramp on the Edgartown side. The recent run of extremely low tides and then the four-day northeaster have caused scouring beneath the retaining wall that separates Dock street from the ferry slip. In order to get the repairs done in one day, we need to start early and work late.

The school vacation week in February and the few days before and after seems to be the very quietest time for the Chappy Ferry as well as for the rest of the Vineyard. This is as close as we get to the “dead of winter.” Even so there have still been some interesting outdoor activities.

It’s been a quiet week on Chappaquiddick — in fact, the quietest week of the year. School vacation, February, and living on an island add up to a trip to somewhere else, either warmer or one with more snow. But for those of us who didn’t go anywhere, this was the week you didn’t have to wait in any lines, and the roads were empty.