I will readily admit that fall is my favorite season of the year. The fact that I work at the Polly Hill Arboretum (a tree museum!) makes it possible for me to see the collective fall color of over 1,300 different trees and shrubs.

If you want to play pickup soccer all you need is a ball and a field.

If you want to play pickup cricket you need a bit more.

A tennis ball (or four, in case one bounces away) will do in place of the hard leather ball typically used in games. Wooden spikes will do for wickets, and sticks with blue surveyors’ tape on them work for denoting the outfield boundaries.

Ray Ellis of Edgartown died at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital on Oct. 4 of complications from a stroke. He was 92.
A nationally recognized artist whose paintings are in the permanent collection at The White House and museums around the country, Mr. Ellis sought out beauty in everything. He was an unwavering optimist and a romantic who imagined the best possible reality and then stepped inside and lived it.
Born in Philadelphia on April 24, 1921, Raymond George Ellis grew up on Lismore Avenue in Glenside, Pa.

This Cape-style home comes with many updates including a dramatic great room with cathedral ceilings and a floor-to-ceiling stone gas fireplace. It is nestled under 50-foot evergreens and offers privacy with landscaped grounds featuring mature plantings and a koi pond.

From cooking to bookkeeping, the course selection at ACE MV attracts increasing interest every year. But facing a mounting financial crisis, the organization is looking to secure public funding by next fall, or close down operations permanently.

A trio of cross-country runners took the top spots in the first annual Gay Head 10K held Sunday morning in Aquinnah.

Conor Welch, 25, of Allston, won the race with a time of 36:06.

On Sunday morning the town of Aquinnah hosts a 10K run, the first of its kind in the area. The race is part of the Save the Gay Head Lighthouse campaign. Aquinnah police are asking residents of Moshup Trail and State Road to use extra caution when exiting their driveways. Read more ....

The closing ceremony for the yearly American Heroes Saltwater Challenge had passed, but there was still one more award to hand out.

Sarah and Bob Nixon and their family were awarded the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) Community Service award on Friday night. The family was honored for their work hosting the challenge. Now in its fifth year, the Nixons bring a group of recovering wounded service men and women and their families to the Beach Plum Inn and to fish the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby.

Questions of size and character dominated discussion at a Martha’s Vineyard Commission public hearing Thursday night, the third such session the commission has held on plans to renovate and expand the Stop & Shop Vineyard Haven store.

Skies overhead are full of bright stars, and from time to time the moon and planets are visible, too. On occasion there is something special about the arrangement, like when things appear in pairs. This Monday night a thin crescent moon appears right next to the bright planet Venus. The two are in the southwestern sky just after sunset. They can be seen for about an hour as both are near the horizon and will soon set. The two are in the zodiacal constellation Scorpius, one of the southernmost zodiacal constellations.