Monday and Tuesday were proof positive of Vineyard living at its finest. Both days were sunny and warm bursting with the promise of spring.

My 89-year-old great aunt, Margaret, sold her house in the hills of Pennsylvania and moved to Florida. She called me in tears a year later to say that the weather was very nice but, oh, so boring. She missed the drastic seasonal changes until her dying day.

It’s time for the big switch in my freezer. I’ve been making bread, slicing it and freezing it. It’s wonderful to grab a couple of slices for my morning toast all summer when I’m too busy and too hot to bake.

Also, I’m trying to finish up the frozen fruit, vegetables and meat from fall harvesting. The pantry supply of onions, garlic and potatoes is dwindling but should last another month.

Violet is involved in a sustainability protest project at school so it is a great opportunity for me to examine my own behavior. We have been discussing how to navigate a plastic filled world with as little personal use as possible. For example, our tap water here in Vineyard Haven is perfectly fine. We use glass jars and bottles filled at the tap rather than buy cases of plastic water bottles. A big shout out to the Island school children in their effort to ban single-use plastic straws.

Any growing of or purchasing of local food is saving the energy needed to ship that food from who-knows-were. Any serious study of biodynamics includes the suggestion to eat only what grows in your region. Granted, we all love oranges and bananas, but kale, cabbage and collards are equally packed with nutrition.

Last summer I had bumper crops of both butternut squash and pumpkin. I prepared it into a puree and popped it into the pressure canner at 10 pounds pressure for 40 or so minutes.

Recently, because the hens are laying again, I made a custard from the aforementioned canned product, with some eggs, vanilla and maple syrup. Cooked in a crock pot for a morning, it was great for a few days of not-too-sweet dessert.

Not much happening out in the open ground. Even with a couple of sunny, warm days, the ground is still frozen solid. I hauled a big piece of black weed mat to an area with southern exposure. I’m hoping to speed up some thawing for the outdoor planting of early spring greens.

The greenhouse is looking promising. I planted spinach, lettuce, kale, beets, carrots and pea shoots about a month ago. They all finally germinated. It was simply too darn cold for anything to emerge in January.

I’ve yet to address my sad pots and window boxes with their wilting Christmas greens. Over the weekend I noticed a couple of catbirds hanging around them. They are polishing off all the wizened holly berries. They may be the culprits who ate all my winterberries. Last week I blamed cedar waxwings.

I’m becoming weary of the Howard Schultz’s of the world. These are billionaires who are calling the tax-the-rich plans of Elizabeth Warren et all, radical and left wing.

I need to quote David Leonhardt from Monday’s Op-Ed page of the New York Times: “Imagine a presidential candidate making the following speech: ‘My fellow Americans I’m here today to tell you about my economic plan. Each year I will require every middle class family across America to write a check. We will then pool the money and distribute it to the richest Americans among us — the top one per cent of earners, because of their talent, virtue and success deserves even more money.’”

That seems pretty radical but is, in fact, what have been the actual changes in the American economy since, I don’t know, the Reagan years.

The latest tax cut brought to you by DJT, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell gave a big fat gift to the rich folks, and yet we still believe it will trickle down to us?