At Grey Barn farm in Chilmark a turkey has made her nest in a patch of chamomile. Over the past weekend some of the chamomile had been cut and placed in a pitcher at the farm, a graceful, tangled mass of green, white and yellow spilling over a stack of cookbooks for sale. How much for the chamomile, a customer asked. Free, was the answer — which prompted the story from the smiling farm worker about the turkey in the chamomile.

Turkeys are nesting. There are lady slippers in Baptist Temple Park in Oak Bluffs too, and fat littlenecks in Sengekontacket Pond, the water still clear and clean from its winter rest. In Edgartown the squid are in, but the time-honored tradition of jigging for them off Memorial Wharf has been delayed a little this year, along with the reconstruction project at the town wharf that has been going on all winter.

No matter, the squid jiggers have moved on, pursuing their craft at State Beach. The earliest swimmers of the season are on the beach too, braving that first bracing plunge of a new season.

Overnight, it seems, the Island has made the leap from winter to summer. Somewhere in the middle, briefly there was April, when daffodils and forsythia painted the landscape in brush strokes of yellow and the wind blew hard for days on end and the last of the woodpile went into evening fires to take off the chill. And no one was ready to give up their warm socks and down coats quite yet.

This is what passes for spring on the Vineyard.

Now suddenly May is slipping away, and the weather has morphed from winter cold to summery warmth.

Memorial Day is Monday, and the Island will pause for the national holiday, as the veterans of Martha’s Vineyard hold their ceremony at the Oak Grove Cemetery in Vineyard Haven. On Friday, school children in Edgartown, Tisbury and Chilmark make their annual marches to the sea. This year when we watch the children throw flowers in the water to remember those lost defending our country, we will also think of the war in Ukraine and its unspeakable atrocities, of other children murdered this week in a Texas classroom and of the fragility of all our lives.

And perhaps return to nature for more reflection.

Happy Memorial Day to all Gazette readers near and far. Please slow down on Island roads, and remember not to drink and drive.