The poet Amy Lowell loved to write about the gardens of spring and the flowering of this season that is our prelude to the clatter and clamor of summer. But Lowell somehow missed the point when she wrote her fondly remembered poem Lilacs. That was in the spring of 1922 and this is what she wrote:

"Heart-leaves of lilac all over New England/Roots of lilac under all the soil of New England/Lilac in me because I am New England." She was wrong, of course. Too close to Boston, too distant from the Vineyard. Now in full bloom of pale lavender, deep purple and white, lilacs belong first of all to springtime on the Vineyard and only then to the rest of New England. And while we do not wish  to disparage other coastal areas, nothing matches the sight and scent of Island lilacs for either importance or beauty.