Community block grant money is a little-known program that helps Islanders with affordable loans for home repairs. Cathy Weiss is one homeowner who has benefited.

The bouquets are gone from the rickety shelves and wicker chairs at the end of long driveways. Farm stand signs have been taken down. Clusters of people with name tag necklaces are no longer browsing the shops.

The construction of two new solar arrays is underway after groundbreakings in Edgartown and Vineyard Haven. The Cape and Vineyard Electrical Compact broke ground on an array at the Farm Institute in Katama on the first snowy day of the year.

The weather has drastically changed from autumn to winter already. Most of the leaves have left and we’ve had a few mornings in the 20s. We had blustery winds mid week with boats and airplanes being cancelled.

Sandpiper Realty Inc. of Edgartown is pleased to announce that Elaine Miller has been elected to the board of directors of the Cape Cod and Islands Association of Realtors and Multiple Listing Service.

The Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank reported revenues of $373,182.66 for the business week ending on Friday, Nov. 22, 2013.

Indian summer days stretched on this year as if they would have no end: late season swimming practically bumped into early season scalloping but finally the natural world has come to its senses. The last of the leaves blew down early this week with a ferocious wind driven down from Canada on bitterly cold air.

Naturally, this being the week before Thanksgiving, the subject was how to make Christmas wreaths. Naturally. This is not quite to be construed as a complaint. Quite the contrary. There may be grounds for grumbling about the onset, just after the regattas and just before Labor Day, of mail-order Xmas season.

Robbie Tibbets came to the Island from the small town in Maine where he grew up. He had been sitting on his favorite bar stool drinking Heineken some years ago, which is what he did all summer until harvest time when a news program flashed pictures of a state police helicopter landing in a five-acre field of pot not too far away.

On Saturdays when I was nine my mother would get home at five, exhausted and hungry from her job as receptionist at Schultzes Beauty Salon. My job was to have a snack ready for her for our Brookside Boulevard (the ritzy street) ritual.