Vineyard woodlands are full of delicate pink lady’s slippers, the striking native wild orchids that grow here. In some places hundreds of lady’s slippers can be counted in a small patch of woods. Also called moccasin flower, the flower’s genus name (Cypripedium acaule) derives from the Latin word for Venus’s slipper.

Public Safety Alert: Children at Play

In one more sign of the changing season, today is the last day of school for most Island public schools (the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School had its last day yesterday.) The familiar yellow buses that roll on Island roads early in the morning and again in the afternoon throughout the fall, winter and spring, are ready for decommissioning as transportation vehicles for our most precious resource — Vineyard school children. At least until just after Labor Day.

Unfortunate License

The very thought that walking down a Vineyard beach and casting a fishing line into the ocean will require a license would appall and anger generations of fishermen stretching deep into the Island’s past.

The same restriction on fishing in freshwater ponds likely would have struck Island fishermen of past centuries as a foolhardy and unwarranted invasion of the government in a matter that was none of its business.

Confronting the Pump

On Thursday, the Vineyard Transit Authority will mark nationwide Dump the Pump Day — an annual occasion that calls on people to use public transportation to save money, conserve gasoline and reduce greenhouse gases — by cutting its already bargain fares in half and holding a party at the youth hostel in West Tisbury.

Wash Day Art

As the green movement has grown, hanging out clothes has become de rigueur. Solar dryers, some call them, but around here they are still known as clotheslines, and on the Island they never really went out of style, except possibly with the emerging trophy house crowd who live in climate-controlled homes where the windows are never thrown open to the fresh, unpolluted sea air.

Small But Mighty

The piping plover is an amazing profile of endurance, hardiness, fidelity and overcoming long odds for survival. These tiny shorebirds mate for life and migrate north for thousands of miles every year to build their nests, which are literally scrapes in the sand.

They are especially attracted to wide-open barrier beaches that have been washed over by winter storms, and this year the Vineyard has many prime real estate offerings in that category, from Norton Point in the Katama section of Edgartown to Tashmoo in Vineyard Haven.