Katie Mayhew sang twice at Symphony Hall in Boston yesterday, first in rehearsal and second as part of a competition for the Boston Pops High School Sing-Off.

Katie, 15, is one of 22 contestants in a statewide competition to be a singer with the Boston Pops this summer. They came from all over the state, from as far east as the Vineyard and as far west as Stockbridge. Each singer, aged from 15 to 18, was aspiring to be a winner. The grand winner will perform with conductor Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops as part of the Fourth of July concert and fireworks.

VINEYARD CHILL. By Philip R. Craig. Scribner. New York, N.Y. 2008. 256 pages. $24, hardcover.

A popular young Island barmaid has gone missing. An old buddy turns up who invariably brings trouble like a perverse hostess gift. It’s winter on Martha’s Vineyard and all’s well with J.W. Jackson, wife Zee, and their two small children — if you overlook a murder or two, and a couple of thugs rolling off the ferry in a yellow Mercedes convertible in search of ill-gotten loot.

What makes the Vineyard a special place for growing plants? C.L. Fornari, writer of garden information and radio host of the Saturday morning program Garden Line on WXTK (95.1 FM) is “happy to say that gardening and agriculture on the Island is thriving.”

Speaking to a packed audience at the Martha’s Vineyard Garden Club April meeting, Ms. Fornari presented a slide show of selected photographs from her soon-to-be-published book, A Garden Lover’s Martha’s Vineyard.

Even if you don’t call your brother by the name of a different vegetable every day (Broccoli, Turnip, or, whenever he’s being nice, Pea Pod), many readers know what the quirky, crazy-lovable third grader Clementine means when she says, “Spectacularful ideas are always sproinging up in my brain.”