Margaret Knight>

508-627-8894

(margaret02539@yahoo.com)

The vegetables that have been slowly but happily growing in my greenhouse all winter have decided it’s spring. Arugula, tatsoi, lettuce and kale are shooting up flower stalks as fast as I can nip them off. However, Brine’s Pond was frozen over on Wednesday morning, and the ground remains hard despite the sunny days. If you’re a realist, it’s good to remember that spring is still a couple of months off; if you’re a dreamer, and you can find a sunny spot out of the wind, it seems as if spring is right around the corner.

Another bomb turned up at Wasque recently, similar to the one that was found out there about a year ago. It was about three feet long, lying on the dunes looking very much like a seal taking a siesta. The Edgartown police were called in, and the state bomb squad arrived within hours. They take extreme care with the disposal of these bombs, so police, EMTs, and fire fighters were all present, but waiting back at the gatehouse during the actual detonation. The bomb was not a live one. Smaller bombs are found regularly on Little Neck in Cape Pogue Pond, and the Army is working on a cleanup plan for that area.

Colleen Garrett, who lives in Pittsfield, Vermont when she’s not on the Vineyard, sent me an email after seeing a curious story about “snow rollers” on the weather segment of a local news channel. She’d never seen or heard of them, even though she grew up in Buffalo. When she next opened the Gazette, she saw the photo of the “snow curls,” and then read about them in this column. As she says, “It turns out we call them snow rollers up here.”

In other unusual phenomena, Frank Partel writes from Vero Beach that he and Mary Ellen observed a “backstroking” bottle nose dolphin. Frank says, “The dolphin lay on its back on the surface and used its fluke and flippers to complete a ‘stroke’ on its back, continuing until it had completed a thirty-foot diameter with a constant radius.”

After contacting Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute where they study porpoises, Frank learned that this is a social behavior for cooperative feeding, in which one bottle nose dolphin serves to drive the prey towards a barrier formed by the other dolphins. Although dolphins are known to swirl and slap their flukes to move their prey, which the Partels often see near the seawalls on the Indian River, they’d never seen a cavorting backstroker having fun while it fished in a circle with its pals.

We are sad to learn of the death of Bob Nicholas. Bob and Sally started coming to Chappy twenty years ago, and in 1983 bought and renovated Diana Vauclain’s house on the bluff overlooking the outer harbor. There, Bob had a study with a good recliner where he liked to sit, and a wonderful view of the harbor. He served as treasurer of the CIA for a number of years. In recent years he has been living at Windemere in Oak Bluffs. The family will hold a service tomorrow, Saturday, at 11 a.m. at the Faith Community Church on Meetinghouse Way in Edgartown.

The FARM Institute’s weekly winter programs have started with Farmers-in-Training from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. on Friday afternoons for students with some history on the farm. Saturday afternoon chores for younger “farmers” are from 12:30 to 3:30 p.m. Summer program information and registration is available on the Web site.

The Adult and Community Education Program, which offers classes on subjects as diverse as Tax Seminar, The Tudors, Nautical Knots (taught by Chappaquiddick sailor Lily Morris), Self-Hypnosis, and Birding 101, announces its new catalog of fifty courses for the spring session at the high school from March 9 to April 16. Classes will meet on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings at 6:30 p.m. There will also be single-event seminars (including an Introduction to the Alexander Technique which I will teach on Thursday, March 12 from 6:30 to 8:30)

The catalog of courses, registration forms, gift certificates, and other information are also available on line at acemv.org. In-person registration is at the high school lobby from 5 to 7 p.m., Tuesday, March 3 and Wednesday, March 4, or the first night of classes with an added fee of $5.

Many thanks to Brad Woodger, the real Brad, who filled in for me with last week’s column. Evidently Captain Brad Fligor got lots of compliments for the column last week — his name was inadvertently included as its author. (Maybe you wondered why he was hanging out with Kim so much, or talking about himself in the third person.)