A SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR LANDLOCKED MERMAIDS by Margot Datz, Beyond Words, $16.

Vineyard artist and writer Margot Datz posits a universe where men, taking a page from Darwin, descended as apes from the trees, whereas women “rose up from the frothy sea, as resplendent as Aphrodite on her scalloped chariot.” But the mating call is more persistent than the tug of a thick rope, so we mermaids have “abandoned our psychic habitat to seek mates on shore, and we have been like fish out of water ever since.” Ain’t that the truth?

Editors’ Choices

Yankee Magazine’s New England travel issue has named four Vineyard establishments as editors’ choice winners for 2008. The magazine named Détente and Once in a Blue Moon in Edgartown, Iroquois Cottage in Oak Bluffs and Mediterranean in Vineyard Haven.

Ouch — both literally and metaphorically.

I will say pointedly that thistle has some sharp issues. To look at this plant, one might think of a pincushion due to its predilection for prickles. You can find them on its stem, leaves, bracts, and even the single bulbous flower head.

By LYNNE IRONS

I am crazy about the Kousa dogwood. They seem to be everywhere. I have two just out of infancy and hope for them a long life as well as for me. The one in front of Morrice the Florist is particularly impressive.

There is a violet rose bush on the State Road side of the intersection with the Vineyard Haven-Edgartown Road. Who knows what it is? I have looked through my rose books. I might have to knock on the door and beg a couple of cuttings from the owner.

Indigo buntings must be the deepest and brightest blue of all the birds we are likely to see on the Island. A close-up view of a male in good lighting will inevitably invoke a gasp or a “Wow!” from the viewer.

Their song is quite spectacular too. Books describe it in various ways: a musical series of warbling notes, with each phrase given in pairs, or as a lively, high, sharp, strident urgent warble with phrases at different pitches. Of course these verbal descriptions do not do the song justice.

Temperature: Precip.

Day Max. Min. Inches.

Fº Fº

June 20 75 56 .00

June 21 77 64 Trace

June 22 81 63 .00

June 23 80 65 .00

June 24 78 65 Trace

June 25 78 57 .18

June 26 80 63 .00

Water temperature in Edgartown harbor: 72º F.

A point of purchase system for the cafeteria, two hybrid vans and a mobile language lab — these are some of the projects whose funding was approved Monday at the last Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School committee meeting of the fiscal year.

An additional $100,000 for new football field bleachers also got a green light from the committee, using money from the high school excess and deficiency fund which must be allocated before July 1.

Under the Table

Unreported, untaxed, underground income on the Island long has been seen as playing a significant role in the overall Vineyard economy. Now an Island economic profile prepared for the Martha’s Vineyard Commission and the Island Plan has taken a closer look at the Vineyard’s underground economy and its wider implications for Island life.

Rose-Colored Fences

This is peak season for rose-viewing on the Vineyard, with pink wild roses in fields and on roadsides, rambler roses on Edgartown’s white picket fences, clusters of fragrant rosa multiflora tumbling everywhere in West Tisbury where, once, they were planted to be the borders of pastures.

MEMORIAL DESTROYED

Editors, Vineyard Gazette: