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A Lazy Week Under Mostly Sunny Skies


It was a nice, lazy week at the cottage in West Tisbury. We hiked and wandered, but we also stayed at the cottage and read and puttered and cooked. It rained all day on Monday, which was fine, we got the too-much-stuff we packed as we emptied the house a bit more organized that day. Below is the cottage on New Lane, known as the Rookery, where we are currently staying.


The Savannah

There’s a nature preserve around one of the coves of Tisbury Great Pond called Long Point Wildlife Refuge, and when you get out past the very cool statue of a harrier hawk that marks the path down to the beach, it feels like you are suddenly transported to the African veldt. The twisted trees are scrub oaks and pitch pine rather than baobab trees, and the grasses around the trees include New England asters as well as beach plums, but the overall effect has you imagining elephants just beyond the horizon and watching out for lions hiding in the tall brush.


Once you make it down to the water, you follow along Long Cove and the main part of Tisbury Great Pond until you get to the barrier beach that (usually) separates the fresh water pond from the open Atlantic Ocean beyond South Beach. We walked down the beach and across the stretch of sand that is sometimes broken through to let the seawater into the pond to make it brackish. The other side of the pond is called Quansoo, for a Wampanoag word that means “long fish,” or eel, because eels were one of those species that apparently liked the brackish water and the Native American who lived there caught them for food when the eels migrated to the ocean in September and October. We went over to Quansoo Preserve later in the week and saw the scene from the other side of the pond. I've looked at Tisbury Great Pond from both sides now . . .

Looking for elephants

Our hike back through the African-looking savannah from the beach at Long Point was under sunny skies on a beautiful day. Those elephants stayed just out of sight, though.

Farmers’ Market at West Tisbury Agricultural Building

Last Saturday morning, we went to the farmers’ market at the West Tisbury Agricultural Fairgrounds. Martha’s Vineyard is much more rural than people realize, and there are a lot of farms, especially Up Island in West Tisbury and Chilmark. There were booths from Whippoorwill Farm, Beetlebung Farm, Flat Point Farm, and Morning Glory Farm, where we got a lovely eggplant. There were plenty of other farm booths, plus seafood from The Swimming Pig, baked goods, homemade creamsicles, and my favorite, bluefish pate, from the Martha’s Vineyard Smokehouse, which was delicious with the bread I made later in the day.


The sky was completely overcast when we arrived, and not long after, it rained for a solid minute before the clouds parted and there was nothing but blue skies by the time we reached the coffee concession, a vintage yellow camping trailer. We took our coffee and scones over to listen to the entertainment, a drummer and a guitar player who had quite a repertoire, providing listeners with great covers of David Bowie and the Grateful Dead.


On the way back to the van, I noticed how many booths were selling flowers, especially dahlias. And later that afternoon, I walked down New Lane and up Pond View Farm Lane to a place where there was a whole field of dahlias growing. They like their flowers here.


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