Once when the children were small it rained on Christmas Day. It was such an oddity in the ‘70s so we took a tape recording of the sound. I know I’m old but that does not seem so long ago. This was when the Vineyard Haven harbor would occassionally freeze. A Coast Guard cutter would clear a path for the early morning ferry.

Gratia Harrington was nearing her 100th birthday at the time. She told me that when she was a little girl it froze to Nantucket. The doctor ice skated from East Chop to West Chop to deliver her.

Nowadays that almost sounds made up.

How I digress . . . It was a nice change on Monday to have rain and wind forcing me indoors. This paper ran an article recently about how the Vineyard is still in a moderate drought.

As a gardener still digging in the ground, I can confirm. I hear lots of complaining about “all that rain” and how it rains every weekend. Rain is not the same as cloudy with a little drizzle.

Other parts of the country or world get more than their share. Reports of flooding are almost daily.

A healthy landscape should get one inch of rain a week. Clearly we do not — hence the thriving irrigation businesses on-Island.

While I’m still on the subject of flooding, I took an ill-fated trip to the Vineyard Haven post office on Monday afternoon. I wish I knew why. The boats had not run all day, so how could I have any mail? At any rate the Five Corners situation is still the same mess. I thought the big “hump” a few years ago was supposed to address the flooding?

On a better note I made a nice pizza from my canned tomato sauce into which I put some of last summer’s dried tomatoes. To call them sun dried would be a lie. I put them, sliced in half, into a food dehydrator and then froze them. I soaked them in olive oil overnight before they went into the sauce. It was wonderful.

I attempted to prepare last season’s luffas for Christmas presents. Good thing a person is capable of learning from mistakes since I seem to make plenty.

I dried them in the greenhouse, which was a joke. All but two were too moldy and soft.

As I write, I have the two half-decent ones soaking in a bleach mixture.

Time for Plan B as far as presents go. Good thing I love the hustle and bustle of last-minute preparation. Years ago our family made the wise decision to limit spending at Christmas. I told them what I wanted and needed most was for them to come over to the house and take something away.

Since it is, in fact, Christmas — the birthday of Jesus, if you will. Born in Palestime some 2,000 years ago into a politically volatile situation: Roman occupation and King Herod killing infants. How little has changed in that region. For those who know their Bible, we can go back to the split of Isaac and Ishmael — the sons of Abraham — which probably started the feud between the Jews and the Arabs. Here we are again. It’s sad everywhere you look.

I guess the only reprieve we have is in the words of Tiny Tim: God Bless Us, Every One!