The Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society has issued a call for applicants for their annual grant program. Eligible are all farm related individuals or organizations whose goal is to improve the quality of life and contribute to the sustainability of the Martha’s Vineyard agricultural community.

By LYNNE IRONS

Well, I squandered perfectly good advice by giving it away while failing to heed it myself. My ornamental grasses were never cut and now, as a result of the snow and ice, are strewn all over in a jumbled mess still attached to the plant. They are woven into neighboring shrubs and are hindering the just-barely-emerging snowdrops and crocus. I see hours spent on a stool making sense of the debacle. I love the word debacle. It can be used interchangeably with train wreck when describing one’s own garden.

Migrating red-winged blackbirds have arrived! The red-wings that had left last fall are beginning to return after spending the winter in the southeastern United States. A sure sign of the coming spring even though it is still February. They announce their presence by their arrival at bird feeders, their brilliant red epaulets on their wings flashing and contrasting to the black everywhere else, and their singing from treetops. Soon they will be singing from our wetlands as the males set up their territories. The females, which are streaked brown sparrow-like birds, will arrive in another few weeks.

Even when the snow flies and there is a bitter cold blast of wind from the north, when icicles hang from the roofs, Island workshops are busy.

At John Thayer’s Vineyard Haven workshop near the shore of Lagoon Pond, the garage door rattles loudly when a cold easterly breeze blows across the pond. A westerly wind rattles the back door. Mr. Thayer makes custom furniture and cabinetry.

Ice Bound

From the Gazette editions of February, 1934:

GEOGRAPHY AND STRIPED BASS

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

When considering the current state of the striped bass fishery, it is interesting to note that geography plays an important role in assessing how much trouble the species is in. While Massachusetts and Maine have experienced subpar bass fishing for several years, states to the south of us have enjoyed exactly the opposite.

Winter Break

If you are the parent of a Vineyard school child, chances are you won’t be reading this because you are gone.

There is no need for speed if you are a snail. Life in the fast lane is not a high priority for the whelk, a common marine snail found in the ocean.

Jobless Island

How many Islanders are out of work? No one knows for certain, but we know the numbers are rising to near record levels, mirroring the rest of the country and now apparently the world. The New York Times reported last weekend that fifty million people are forecast to be out of work by the end of this year, as unemployment spreads around the globe like wildfire.

And the year has just begun.

In this year-long serialized novel, set on the Vineyard in real time, a native Islander (“Call me Becca”) returns home after two decades to help her eccentric Uncle Abe keep his landscaping business, Pequot, afloat. Abe has a paranoid hatred of Richard Moby, the CEO of an off-Island wholesale nursery, Broadway. Convinced that Moby wants to destroy Abe personally, and all Island-based landscaping/nursery businesses generally, Abe is obsessed with “taking down” Moby.