I love the picture above our column that evokes so many positive memories, particularly at this poignant time of year when Columbus Day marks the end of the season for so many Oak Bluffs homeowners. If you squint, the stylized Cottage City cottage looks remarkably like Dorothy West’s, the original writer of what was called Cottager’s Corner until November 1973 when she changed it to Oak Bluffs.

We have been having the best fall weather. The wind has been blowing a lot, but we can handle that compared to the alternative. We still need the rain. I am getting nervous because people say that if the ponds are not full, the winter will give us a lot of snow.

Fall has always been my favorite season. The air dries out, the bugs stop biting and you don’t have to get up so early to see the sunrise. The pressures of summer are behind us, there is little chance that a hurricane will hit the Vineyard and as long as I’ve got a year’s worth of firewood under cover, I can breathe a sigh of relief.

The film comes from 1957, so the colors look elemental and crayon bright. The music is jouncy and insistent, like something you’d hear in an old-time Friendly’s Restaurant. The men wear neckties and smoke, pretty much no matter where they are or what they’re doing.

Nathan Gould is on a mission to prove that all hotel food is not created equal. The bland chicken breast is out and a sous vide Good Farm chicken roulade is in.

“We’re continuously moving towards sourcing locally, which a lot of hotels don’t,” Mr. Gould said walking through the doors of the Harbor View Hotel where he is the new executive chef. “A lot of hotels that have to do volume rather than take the time to have a relationship with Island farmers and fishermen, they’ll go to a corporate account and get stuff moved in from wherever. Hopefully, we can change that.”

Summer is the best season for foraging, when beach plums and wild grapes are ripe for the picking, and black walnuts fall from the neighbor’s tree. Violet Cabot would know. She spent much of the summer foraging with her family, scouring the landscape for rare berries and searching the swamps of Aquinnah for watercress.

A sixth grader at the West Tisbury school, Violet has been preparing for the big event of the fall — the Local Wild Food Challenge, which will be held at the Edgartown Rod and Gun Club on Columbus Day. Foraging is hard work, she said, but it pays off when the dish is served.

What a welcome relief to get a tiny bit of rain over the weekend. I was pleased to read in last week’s paper that September was the driest one in 67 years. I felt validated in my opinion. I was feeling quite a bit of anxiety over the droughty situation.

Birding on the Vineyard and elsewhere has changed immensely with the invention of the cell phone and iPad. A good example occurred Oct. 5 in the late morning when Lanny McDowell, Pete Gilmore and Ken Magnuson spotted three Caspian terns on South Beach from the west side of Chilmark Pond.

Groundsel tree isn’t shy about waiting for the right time to make an entrance.

The Yard in Chilmark is having a full program for Fall for the Arts. On Tuesday, Oct. 15, at 7 p.m. YardWorks presents Scott Crawford’s reading of My Fathers House, a tale of a father and his two children overcoming their differences.