The drop in humidity this week is certainly a relief and a fitting end of frantic summer activities. Back to school preparations are in full swing. I’ll be driving Violet back to college next week, so life will change again in my household.

The late summer gardens are in need of a touch-up. Simply removing dead sticks and spent plants makes the remaining foliage tidy and attractive.

The goldsturm rudbeckia, also known as black-eyed Susans, are in full and glorious bloom. Down-Island Cronig’s has some nice ones as well as blooming sedums and Joe Pye weed. That and the shady areas under the solar panels make for a pleasant parking experience.

Although it tends to get weedy and out of control, I’m fond of trumpet vine. The Fourway in Vineyard Haven on Franklin street has a large orange one. The Conroy and Co. office opposite the Chilmark Store has a yellow one. I don’t know if I have seen a yellow one anywhere else.

I also like the fall-blooming, jasmine-scented clematis. It too tends to run amok if not clipped aggressively but is lovely spilling over fences when many of the summer annuals are past their prime.

Now that I no longer have barn cats — thanks to their age-related demise — I’m overrun with multi-generations of bunnies. I smugly assumed they were simply enjoying the clover in the lawn. Not so, it seems. All the impatiens are eaten to the quick. I fear for my crocuses in the spring. I’m loathe to kill them; they are downright adorable.

I kept domestic rabbits for years when the children were small. I had a house bunny, a lop-earned angora named BunBun. He won the children a blue ribbon at the Agricultural Fair back in the day when it was held at the old Grange Hall fairgrounds.

A few weeks ago I mentioned the hibiscus growing at Eileen Blake’s. I noticed a large stand of the native white ones at Parsonage Pond. Also in the no-longer-a-pond area were some nice lobelia cardinalis. A bright red native to New England, it is striking in late summer.

Violet took a photo of my beds that held onions this week. The buckwheat planted less than two weeks ago is up and running. Hope springs eternal that it will suppress some weeds. As if!

I left my onions to dry in the greenhouse. Recently I removed all their tops and after a few more days of drying they should be ready for winter storage.

There is a small roadside garden at Surveyor’s Lane on State Road in Vineyard Haven. It is all made up of zinnias. The folks planted them from seed. They are so much nicer than the six packs purchased at local nurseries — not to mention way less pricey.

It is beyond me that people are still in denial concerning climate change.

Let’s see: first tropical storm in California in decades, a catastrophic fire on Maui and people worldwide suffering in extreme heat. July was the hottest month ever recorded on earth.

Like most people — I hope — I do my small part. I try to limit purchases packed in plastic, which is no easy task.

I’m a nutcase about not wasting food and/or water. I grow most of my food and reuse as much as possible.

However I drive non-electric vehicles and am not as outspoken as I would like.

I grew up in oil country in western Pennsylvania and saw run-off from the wells in streams all the time.

It never occurred to me in the 1950s that it was dangerous. In the 1970s when Richard Nixon, to his everlasting credit, created the EPA, it did not go over well with oil people in my hometown. They worried about jobs and the government telling them what to do on their own properties.

Some of these attitudes have persisted to this day, sadly.

Don’t forget this was right after the Cuyahoga River caught fire as a result of so much toxic waste in it.

The best news in the fight for a better environment happened a couple of weeks ago in Montana. Plaintiffs ages 5 to 22 sued the state about a law saying greenhouse gases could not be factored into mining or energy projects. The youngsters actually won in what is now called a game changer.