Grass waits for no man. Typically by this time of year, I have the Cheetos bag open and am in full recline in my comfortable chair. But there is nothing typical about life on Chappy. The temperatures are now approaching the 70s, and all sorts of flora are making their comebacks, chief amongst them the grasses. I can almost hear them yawning and stretching, awoken from a very brief slumber. So I’m mowing again, and I suspect that our farmers down the road have also had to reschedule their fall massages and once again hit the fields. Oh, but the November sun does feel so good warming my bare forearms.

I was in Edgartown on Saturday buying a new pair of quality reading glasses at Summer Shades (my precious pair melted on the muffler of my rider mower, as did the pair before it — a formidable feat of negligence). Whilst at Summer Shades, I had the opportunity to enjoy a four-foot-and-under fashion show of the latest trends in Halloween costumes. There was a plethora of genuinely adorable mini-princesses, and one all-too-convincing grim reaper (I’m only 52!), but my favorite was The World’s Saddest Giraffe. This little fella came fully clad in a giraffe jumper and stood, head down, in the store’s middle. Clearly, the daytime trick-or-treat was underwhelming him.

I found a small dead bird on my clubhouse deck. Probably a casualty of a closed window encounter. My first inclination is to avoid such sights, but I figured that my attention to this life passed might offer some small tribute. So I gathered him (her?) up in my glove and made a bed of leaves for his final resting place. He was a perfect little creature — puffy white breast like a dollop of whipped cream, and shiny peppercorn eyes. To say his body feathers were simply brown would be to ignore all the different shades of the color: ecru, khaki, mocha, and cream, a veritable J. Crew catalog of hues. I set him down on his earthen bed (his was light as a feather) and he tipped a bit awkwardly onto his beak, so I rotated him onto his back so he could see his home, the heavens. Sometimes only in passing do we get to view nature so intimately.

I waded a few feet out into the ocean off our beach. The water is colder than it looks — it has yet to turn that deeper sulky blue that betrays its true temperature. Out a few more yards, I thought I could see a few scallops peeking from their seaweed cover, but pursuing them would mean that the modest waves would reach thigh level and possibly lap at dangerous parts above. So, no.

There were years that I would skin dive for scallops off our dock in October, but this was done more to impress others than from a real desire for scallops. There aren’t many people around here anymore except for my wife and baby, who are generally unimpressed by anything I do. So this is the fourth year running without fresh scallops.

Lastly, there was a family of wild turkeys crossing the road in front of our Kia near Elderly Housing in Tisbury. They were in absolutely no hurry, pausing mid-road often to simply chat amongst themselves. My fellow drivers were all remarkably patient — nary a honk. I doubt we’d be as patient with one another.

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