We had almost five inches of rain this past weekend, according to our neighborhood weatherman Tom Hodgson. It followed a full month of golden late summer sunshine, when nary a tourist nor a fisherman complained.

Meanwhile, at the same time, we received a report from Sarah Mayhew and Bob Brigham, who were birding in the southwest. Bob reports being stranded for two days in a B&B in Double Bayou, Tex. during a truly torrential rainfall (more like a gigantic, non-stop splat) of 44 inches. Their B&B hostess shrugged that the amount didn’t set any records.

You have no doubt noticed the encroaching darkness out there, though we remain under the rubric of daylight saving time until Nov. 3 this year. Daylight will bottom out around 4 p.m. just before Christmas. By bedtime it will feel as though we have been up all night

If you came here from any other part of the country, you may wonder why it gets so dark so soon and so fast. That fact is we are about as far east as we can be (never mind Maine). Our very same eastern time zone extends west as far as Gary, Ind., at the outskirts of Chicago, which is about a thousand miles away, where it must be light and bright today until supper time.

When I was a child in Canada, my parents took me with them to Florida for vacations in March or April, and I remember feeling confused and cheated because the sunshine state didn’t include sunny summer evenings, just regular old Eastern Standard Time.

The country’s history of time zones has been a mess of changes and switches since daylight saving began, to save fuel during the first World War. Then it was repealed, then re-instated, then decided by individual states, with federal standards as well. Following the sun around seems to be the only stable rule around here. Our own Sen. Ed Markey (along with Sen. Marco Rubio) in 2023 proposed a permanent national daylight savings time, but it didn’t pass. In this past year a similar proposal was made to the state legislature, but that too failed to pass.

Maybe now, with saving fuel again an important issue, we will eventually see an hour more of daylight in the winter afternoons.

Gardeners take note —according to the Old Farmers Almanac, the average first frost on the Vineyard occurs Oct. 3, which is any minute now.

The widely-respected artist Rez Williams died last February, and a memorial and exhibit of his work will be held Saturday, Sept. 28, at 3:30 p.m. at the Grange Hall. Rez’s unnaturally large and unnaturally vivid portraits of fishing boats are familiar sights at the Martha’s Vineyard hospital and museum, and he was once called “one of America’s finest artists” by Thomas Hoving, the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The merchants and librarians of West Tisbury’s town center are planning some special Halloween tricks and treats for up-Island kids. The residents of downtown Vineyard Haven may be somewhat relieved.

Happy Birthday to Lynn Christoffers and Megan Mendenhall both on Sunday, Sept. 29.

And belated happy birthday wishes to Amos Sauer, who is now 16 years old, pluse a few days.