Wind is my least favorite weather, but recently, in the Vineyard Haven Post Office parking lot, I actually enjoyed it. I watched it blow the ornamental cherry blossoms all over the place. Cars were covered and pinkness was falling from the sky.

I picked my first asparagus. My 40-year-old bed has been neglected in favor of the relatively new five-year-old one. Right after my picking, I caught a segment of the Local Food Report with Elspeth Hay on WCAI. She talked about Eastham and its history with asparagus. Apparently in the early 1900s, Eastham was mostly treeless and huge farms of asparagus were everywhere. Farmers sold their crop to Boston via train.

When the Depression hit, farmers could no longer afford the necessary fertilizer for their crops and trucks began shipping asparagus from Florida. The Eastham asparagus industry died and the fields went back to trees. Elsbeth said rogue plants can still be found along the back roads in the area.

I think this fall I will work to revitalize my old bed. Some fertilizer and seaweed mulch should bring it back from the brink. Oh, the hopes of future tasks. As if!

The cool weather has brought an unwanted guest into the vegetable garden. For the first time in years I have the root maggot. It is decimating my cabbages and broccoli. Oddly, I failed to recognize the culprit and now I fear it may be too late.

I tossed some diatomaceous earth around without much hope. This is pulverized exoskeletons of sea creatures. Supposedly its sharp microscopic edges will puncture the soft bodies of maggots or caterpillars, which causes them to dry out and then die. It is a wonderful concept, but I’m not holding my breath. I have used it in the past on tiny kittens infested with fleas. It will not harm the kittens and I had moderate but not total success.

If your cole crops suddenly wilt, pull one up. If you have these pests, the root will be gone. It’s too late for me, but one preventative method is newspaper collars for each plant when it is set out in the bed. Honestly, a person cannot catch a break.

One good thing, though, are all the fabulous flowering shrubs out right now. I have a giant fragrant snowball viburnum, which grows all the way to the second story of my house and perfumes the entire yard. This is Viburnum carlcephalum, if you want one I highly recommend it. The equally fragrant Viburnum burkwoodii is seen more often, but its blooms are the size of golfballs, not softball-sized like carlcephalum. You can see these burkwoodii at the exit of down-Island Cronig’s.

When I hobble downstairs in the morning wondering how old I really am, I regret my inattention to advice from my elders in my youth. I am attempting to pass it along to the young people of today. Stop jumping out of the truck bed, for example. It is knee saving to let yourself down easily. Also, stay off those knees on the cold ground without pads. Just saying!

For those of you who are annoyed with my continual disrespect of the Trump administration, however deserved, rest assured I may be an equal opportunity offender. On the Vineyard, I realize this is an unpopular sentiment but I would figuratively have to hold my nose to vote for Bernie Sanders. I’m still aggravated that he did not step up to the plate for Hillary like she did for Obama. His support for her was tepid at best. His supporters who switched to Jill Stein gave Wisconsin to DJT. By the way, this is the Jill Stein seen in a photograph dining with Mike Flynn and Vladimir Putin.

The big hack of the DNC showing that they supported Hillary and not him was a big brouhaha in 2016. It cost Debbie Wasserman Schultz her job. Must I state the obvious? He’s not a Democrat. Since I’m reminding people of past elections, let’s talk third party spoilers: Ross Perot and Ralph Nader.

The week’s laugh-out-loud moment was Mayor Pete’s response to the Alfred E. Neuman nickname from Trump on the Jimmy Fallon show.

P.S. Just saw my first hummingbird outside the kitchen window. It was visiting the rhododendron. All is right with the world.