I recently returned from a three-week hiking trip in the Ozarks, in time for a second springtime here on-Island. Spring here seems to be about a month behind where it was in Arkansas: leaf-out just beginning, poison ivy red and crinkly and pert, puddles announcing their presence with shrill frog choruses. (At least I assume they’re frogs: has anyone ever actually seen a pinkletink in the act of chirping?

Achoo

It’s in the air. And on the car and settling in fine layers on the dining room table and coating the laptop and flying out of the dog’s coat when she shakes. It’s the cause of sneezy noses and watery eyes and it has nothing at all to do with flu season.

Pollen is a season all its own on the Vineyard, where the hayfields grow lush and tall at precisely the same time that the oak and pine trees are producing new growth: read pollen. And then along come gusty ocean breezes to keep the stuff aloft.

Open Season on Tuesdays

Early summer on the farm and the fields are plowed and top-dressed with fresh compost (aka black gold); new lettuce is just coming in; it’s a banner year for asparagus (which loves the moist coastal climate); and the cool weather spring crops are soon to be prime time: sugar snap peas, beets, carrots, spinach, broccoli and cabbage.

The Name of the Game

Listen to John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach, who waited fifteen years before his team earned an NCAA championship title. “Winning games, titles and championships isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but getting there, the journey, is a lot more than it’s cracked up to be,” he said.

He also said: “Team spirit means you are willing to sacrifice personal considerations for the welfare of all. That defines a team player.”

UP AND DOWN

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

While enjoying the excerpt from David Kinney’s book The Big One on your op-ed page, May 22, I tripped over the preposterous theory, blandly presented as fact, that the terms up-Island” and “down-Island are based on longitude.

From a June Just a Thought column by Arthur Railton: