There are times on Martha's Vineyard when you're literally walking on rose petals. The roses that line the streets of Edgartown, decorate the yards of Vineyard Haven, grow wild along the beaches of Oak Bluffs, Chilmark and Aquinnah and sprout unexpectedly in the fields of West Tisbury at the site of a long-disappeared house, all sprinkle their petals in a cool island breeze.

Those are the moments when buying a home on an island seven miles off the Cape Cod coast and accessible only by water or air makes perfect sense.