The wild buttercups have been beautiful this year, great drifts of them strewn across meadows and lawns, no doubt encouraged by the spring rains that have been falling by bucketfuls in recent weeks. Freshwater ponds and streams that had been reduced to caked mudholes are full again. The drought that had threatened last fall is over. The first cut of hay is down in West Tisbury, green and raw, like the new season ahead.

The air is filled with birdsong in the mornings and evenings. You can feel the change — in the gradually warming weather and in the conversation among Islanders. Like the birds, we are full of chatter again. Summer is on the horizon. Not here yet, but coming.

All week long the incoming ferries have been full as seasonal residents arrive to open their houses and greet Island friends. Summer shopkeepers old and new have thrown open their doors. Landscapers and carpenters are working triple time in the annual mad scramble as the clock runs out on winter projects. Yesterday it seemed like there was plenty of time — suddenly now we have run out of time. But yesterday was March, now it is May. For year-round Islanders, more often than not it is a jolt, going from the deep quiet to so much busyness. Call it a summer tuneup.

Memorial Day is Monday. And despite an iffy weather forecast (rain, clouds, damp, a little sun) the long holiday weekend ahead is jammed with activities.

By long tradition at lunchtime on Friday schoolchildren in Edgartown, Tisbury and Chilmark will walk to the harbors to toss flowers in the water, sing patriotic songs and recite the Gettysburg Address to commemorate those who have been lost at sea. The simple ceremonies have been taking place for so long no one can remember exactly when they began. They set the tone for the holiday of remembrance.

There will be a parade of course too on Monday, hosted by the Island veterans of foreign wars, beginning at ten o’clock at the American Legion Hall in Vineyard Haven. Also by long tradition, the Avenue of Flags in the Oak Grove Cemetery will be planted with hundreds of Old Glories, fluttering their red white and blue.

The annual Tisbury town picnic will follow on the shores of scenic Lake Tashmoo. It’s a party for the whole Island, with grills going and children messing about in boats at the marshy edge of the saltwater lake.

As unofficial summer begins, the simple and enduring traditions of Memorial Day weekend on Martha’s Vineyard fill us with nostalgia for a time when every national holiday didn’t beg the question of where our country is headed. As the Island fills back up with seasonal homeowners and visitors from all parts of the nation, there is the usual neighborly gathering and reconnecting, but there is also a palpable sense of caution and uncertainty. As events unfold in Washington, friends who once parked their politics on the mainland are gingerly approaching the question that hangs in the wind, what will happen next?

Our summer rituals become more important. We count on the reopening of our favorite restaurant, the appearance of that vendor at the farmer’s market, the sight of a familiar sailboat on its mooring. The natural world helps restore our equilibrium.

Back briefly to the buttercups. They are from the botanical family Ranunculaceae. The common variety has an acrid juice in its stems and leaves, which discourages browsing animals and encourages the spread of the plant. (So it’s not only the rain.) Buttercup relatives include the delicate wood anemones, columbines and marsh marigolds. The great nature essayist Hal Borland wrote:

“The buttercup is a congenial flower.  It likes the sun and the open meadow, where it blooms in profusion. It has no particular fragrance; nor does it need any. Its friends have no trouble finding it as it is. Half its beauty is in its simplicity, though its color is hard to match and its bright gleam is seldom surpassed. Were it as rare as the arbutus, it would be highly treasured. Instead it is accepted as just another of May’s minor beauties, a meadow wildling of generous nature.

“But now and then even the casual passer-by is caught by the sight of a full-flowered clump of buttercup against the sunny side of a lichen-dappled stone wall and understands how magnificent can be such humble flowering.”

Happy Memorial Day to all Gazette readers near and far. Welcome to another Island summer. Please remember not to drink and drive.