What a welcome change in the weather. Already green shoots of spring-flowering bulbs are poking through. There was a single flower on the witch hazel with the promise of more to come before week’s end. This is a yellow witch hazel often confused with a forsythia. It blooms even earlier than forsythia. There is a large one at Middletown Nursery in North Tisbury. I think it was planted by the late John Gadowski who ran a nursery/flower shop in that location back in the 1970s.

This is my favorite week on the Vineyard, because it is school vacation and many folks head to warmer climates or to some ski resorts in New Hampshire or Vermont. It’s remarkably quiet here on the home front. One easily finds parking in town.

I’m still busy processing sap into maple syrup. The sap runs when it freezes at night but warms during the day. I have a fly-by-night operation going here. I have seven taps, which each run into a jug. They need to be emptied every evening. Then, I manage to dirty every pot and pan I own trying to jockey the raw sap and nearly finished syrup. Nothing I do in nature or the garden world is remotely efficient. Everything takes way more time and effort than the finished product should require.

The only real world take away for me is that I never complain about the cost of food. I know, for example, how much a dozen of my own eggs cost me over time.

Last summer I had a bumper crop of onions. The Ailsa Craig variety was especially productive. I made up a pickled onion mixture with four cups apple cider vinegar and one cup honey. Pack the raw sliced onions into a jar, pour the hot liquid over them and process a mere 10 minutes in a boiling water bath. Having eaten my fill (especially on grilled cheese sandwiches), I added an equal amount of good olive oil and hit it with the hand-held blender. The result is a great salad dressing.

I went to a job site recently. It has at least an acre of lawn. I am not exaggerating to report that every square inch of that lawn was covered in the poop of Canada geese. Usually I would think— “Oh great! Free fertilizer!”—but now bird flu is all I can imagine. It takes some mental gymnastics to imagine we are all going to be alright.

What is alright is the trays of new growth in the greenhouse. The seeds that I started on a 60 degree propagating mat a week ago have mostly all come up. We’re talking onions, spinach, lettuce and broccoli—as far as vegetables.

The lupines came up in two days. This year I’m keeping a little notebook of seeding times and their emerging. We’ll see how long I keep at it once I get really busy. It’s handy to not rely on my aging memory.

That memory serves me sometimes. Some years ago I planted artichokes. It was too cold here in the winter to keep them growing perennially. It usually takes two seasons to produce some “chokes.” I’m giving it another go this year. The seedlings are up and thriving. By next week I should be able to move them up into larger containers.

This past week was the 80th anniversary of the battle of Iwo Jima. We all remember the iconic photo of U.S. marines raising the flag after the bloody battle on Mount Suribachi. My uncle Dan was wounded in that battle. We all grew up proud that Americans stood for worldwide protection of democracy.

Also this week was the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of the sovereign nation of Ukraine. I see my veteran father and uncles turning in their graves over the United States of America siding with the Russian invaders against our decades old allies in Europe.