The Island’s first perennial food forest
On Sept. 27, students, staff, and community stakeholders gathered at the Charter School to celebrate the opening of the Island’s first public food forest. The perennial food-producing garden mimics and supports natural systems, and...
Wild Side: Drury’s longhorn bee
On the last day of September, I got home from work and did what I do virtually every warm day throughout the year: turned on my camera, and took a swing through our yard...
Plant Local: Your yard, our habitat
Martha’s Vineyard Commission, in partnership with BiodiversityWorks, Polly Hill Arboretum, and the Vineyard Conservation Society, has created an initiative called Plant Local for integrating native plants, in support of local biodiversity and climate resilience....
Garden Notes: Tending to perennials in the fall
Soils are currently very dry, as is observed if doing any planting. Amazingly, the soil is powdery dry right under the surface, despite the long soaking from the three-day nor’easter week before last.
It is...
Wild Side: Our Northern flower moth
Regular readers, and our long-suffering neighbors in Oak Bluffs, will know that over a span of 20 years, we’ve gradually converted most of our small yard into meadow, encouraging native grasses and wildflowers in...
Garden Notes: The slow glow of the late season
Wild goldenrod and asters dominate roadsides and open areas, against a backdrop of reddening little bluestem. Island life is slowing down, to the extent that we can all appreciate the mundane beauty that surrounds...
Hoppy to help: a community picking event
Local hop growers and beer lovers gathered at the Cleaveland House in West Tisbury on Thursday morning for the heavily anticipated annual hop picking event.
This year, 41 participants, many donning T-shirts from previous harvests,...
Wild Side: Seed weevils
“Seed weevil” is the kind of imprecise common name that drives naturalists to distraction. To start with, weevils, taken generally, are a vast group of beetles, with not far shy of a quarter-million described...
Garden Notes: Late summer harvest
It always provokes a bit of a negative response to walk full-face into a sticky spiderweb stretching invisibly across some shadowy corner of the garden. Doing some weekend gardening to get in the mood...
What’s in your backyard?
BiodiversityWorks, founded by wildlife biologist Luanne Johnson, is an organization whose mission is to promote conservation through wildlife research and monitoring, and to provide opportunities for people to engage with nature. One of the...
Wild Side: On the hunt
On the long list of insects I’d like to see, one species near the top is the Northern mole cricket, Neocurtilla hexadactyla. The only known Vineyard representative of a small taxonomic family, Gryllotalpidae, that’s...
Garden Notes: Late summer
As summer moves through its solar cycle, nights are cooler with dew, shadows are deeper, and midday sun intensifies with infrared rays. It feels like early fall weather, which children greet with groans of...
Wild Side: A new Vineyard resident
Climate change stands out as the greatest current threat to biodiversity. But when discussing nature, it’s axiomatic that no matter how dire a threat, some species manage to benefit from the changing conditions.
A recent...
Garden Notes: Summer chores
Vitex seems impossibly bluer than ever, this year. Surprise lilies, Lycoris squamigera, do literally surprise, as they suddenly pop up. Island gardens and sidewalks are adorned with the bountiful burst of bloom of rose-of...
Wild Side: Tiger beetles
A favorite activity for my wife and I is canoeing on the Vineyard’s bays and great ponds. Our canoe is a lumbering brute, heavy, flat-bottomed, and broad-beamed, an old boat already when we bought...
Garden Notes: Keeping the flowering alive
August is the high point of Island summer, and the M.V. Agricultural Society’s Agricultural Fair (August 15, 16, 17, 18) is the high point of August. Deadlines loom for making serious floral and vegetable...
Wild Side: The stealthy robber fly
Among the most impressive members of the family Asilidae — that is, the robber flies — the genus Laphria poses something of a puzzle on Martha’s Vineyard. We’ve got vast amounts of seemingly suitable...
Seeds that know the Island
Native plants produce seeds ready to live here. Sure, planting requires care and attention, but anyone is capable, and not just in specialized greenhouses, but on back porches, balconies, and home gardens; all you...
Garden Notes: Carry in, carry out
One finds all sorts of crazy trash in scenic Island spots. “Carry in, carry out” is a good precept for a place like the Vineyard, with heavy visitor pressure.
Unfortunately, our guests, and some residents,...
Wild Side: Bee happy
With more than 200 species of bees having been documented on Martha’s Vineyard, it’s no surprise that our bee fauna exhibits a huge amount of variation. Large and small, social and solitary, specialist and...