Forget the calendar. We are Ohioans. Our seasons are not ruled by official dates; they are ruled by temperatures and our own common sense. And no matter what the calendar notation says, March and spring have little if anything in common.
No, spring begins in April. We can feel it in our bones. Call it the thaw factor.
This month, then, we celebrate spring. And “celebrate” is precisely the word. We love each of Ohio’s four seasons, of course, but few among us would disagree that the one that begins with “w” lasts at least a month or two too long.
By now we have had it. April — the month in which spring truly begins — never seems to get here quickly enough.
At
Ohio Magazine, we anticipate the season with so much enthusiasm that we start planning our April stories a full year in advance. Given the brevity of the season— commencing too late and concluding too soon — we have only a sliver of time in which to capture its beauty in photographs.
That’s why we asked our talented friend Randall L. Schieber to shoot up a storm (if not an April shower) at Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens last spring so we could feature his photography in our annual package of stories this April. (See “
Spring Magic,” by Jill Sell)
As any visitor knows, Stan Hywet is a thing of beauty throughout the year. But surely one of its most magnificent attractions is the peaceful area called the Dell. And this is the season of the Dell. “The best time to see the Dell is the springtime,” says senior gardener Shelley Funai. “There are Virginia bluebells, white large-flowered trilliums, wild ginger [and] red nodding trilliums. All the wildflowers are ephemeral, which means their lifecycles are completed in the springtime.”
(Yes, Virginia, we even acknowledge the floral splendors of an out-of-state namesake. But partisan Ohioans take note: The white trillium is the official state wildflower.)
Keeping the floral theme, this month our featured Ohio personality is wildflower expert Robert Henn. (See “
Ohioan,” written by Ron Rollins and photographed by Jonathan Willis.) Henn says he fell in love with nature as a Boy Scout. Today he is a popular authority on Ohio wildflowers who lectures frequently on the subject.
In addition to flowers, Arbor Day also pops up in spring. Frequent
Ohio Magazine contributor Randy Edwards commemorates the occasion with his “My Ohio” essay on the joys of wandering the woods — a pastime for which he first gained appreciation as a college student when he held summer jobs trimming trees in woodlots across the state. (See “
Branching Out”)
So enjoy the issue. And keep it around. You’ll want to revisit the season all too soon.