The other day while mowing the lawn I stopped to wipe the sweat from my forehead and assess my progress. I am forever tinkering with my technique; an up and back pattern, a series of ever shrinking squares, or even, on a rare day, just going with the flow. Deep in thought I happened to notice, out of the corner of my eye, my five-year-old son, Hardy, dressed in a flowing green cape, pirate hat, and a pair of flippers. He was lurking near the shed and watching me. I pretended not to notice and restarted the mower.

Make Way for Plovers

The recovery of the piping plovers is a good news story in what feels at times like a growing sea of environmental disasters around the world. Placed on the list of threatened species about twenty years ago, these tiny shorebirds that make their nests in bare scrapes of sand on remote, windswept barrier beaches, have made a strong comeback in recent years and are now nesting in large numbers on the Cape and Islands.

Summer Outlook

The Vineyard confidence index is measured in many ways. A quirky economist could devise a matrix involving the number of bulbs and blossoms flowering; the count of sunny days divided by the amount of evening rainfall that makes for happy farmers; the dimensions of freshly painted signs in heralding new or familiar businesses; the frequency of the ferries spilling smiling visitors into Oak Bluffs or Vineyard Haven; the distance of the traffic backups. Most ways you look at it, this has been a promising spring.

Food Pantry

The next Serving Hands food distribution will be on Wednesday, June 23, from 1:30 to 3 p.m. at the First Baptist Church parish house on William street in Vineyard Haven.

Food will be distributed until it runs out. If you have a pantry card, please bring it.

Food is available for participants who are on one of the following programs or meet the USDA income guidelines: food stamps, AFDC, WIC, Welfare, Medicaid, SSI, Head Start, fuel assistance, family day care, Veteran’s Aid or Island Food Pantry.

Gosselin — Keegan

Meghan Gosselin of Vineyard Haven and Brian Keegan of Plymouth announce their engagement. Meghan is the daughter of Ray and Mary Gosselin of Vineyard Haven and Margaret Ekholm of Falmouth. Brian is the son of James Keegan of Carver and Claire DeYoung of Marshfield. A June 2011 wedding is planned.

In a first for her gallery, Louisa Gould this week opens a European show, European Subjects Painted by Island Artists. The public opening reception is on Saturday, June 19, free from 5 to 7 p.m. with live music and refreshments.

The show includes five artists; Anne Grandin, Claudio Gasparini, Jules Worthington, Donna Blackburn and Louisa Gould.

Some 20 people gathered last Sunday evening at the Capawock Theatre in Vineyard Haven to watch a free showing of the movie Tea Party: The Documentary.

Juneteenth is the celebration of African American freedom and achievement and the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. The event dates back to June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers, led by Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Tex., with news that the war had ended and the enslaved were now free. This was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of Jan.

Eating a cheap meal out on the Vineyard can be a challenge, but with the second annual restaurant week scheduled to start on Saturday, Islanders and visitors alike will have the chance to dine out and still hang on to most of their weekly paycheck.

A long list of restaurants that includes the Sweet Life Café in Oak Bluffs, Chesca’s in Edgartown, Lambert’s Cove Inn in West Tisbury, Zephrus in Vineyard Haven and many more will be serving prix-fixe lunches and dinners from June 20 to June 24.

In the early days of the Island’s busiest season, there are many events billed as unofficial “welcome to summer” celebrations. Memorial Day weekend is generally considered the kickoff to the summer season, after which many stores extend their hours, many beaches require passes, and motorists begin to heed time limitations for parking spots, lest they find themselves graced with a ticket from a seasonal, special police officer.