It was 25 minutes past noon when I scored the last serving of the Friday lunch special — scalloped potatoes and ham — at the Auction Restaurant in Shipshewana, Indiana. Just seconds after I ordered, a young man sat down and asked for the special too. “It’s all gone,” said the waitress, a pleasant, middle-aged woman wearing an apron, plain blue dress, and white bonnet. “Well, I was wanting it all morning,” he complained, then settled for a prime rib sandwich.
I admit it: I’m hooked on fishing. Like most addicts, I like to believe I can quit at any time — just walk away. But deep down I know that’s not true. We fishermen even have an expression to explain our illness: “The tug is the drug.”
Last April, for instance, I was fishing the Detroit River, which is always cold in early spring. Even though the air temperature was in the low 50s that morning, high winds had 2-foot waves white-capping the 42-degree water, and it felt like winter.
As spring blooms across Ohio, we also prepare for the inevitable thunderstorms that accompany the season. This past winter, we’ve done more than ever to prepare for the storms, car accidents, and other events that cause lights to go out. The Central Ohio Lineworker Training (COLT) program has been busier than ever, taking advantage of the new indoor facility that we built last year to train both apprentice and journeyman lineworkers about safe and effective methods to repair, and enhance, our electric network.
The horse is Kentucky’s icon, and no place celebrates all things equine better than Kentucky Horse Park.
Located just outside Lexington, the park is like Disneyland with horses. Pristine grounds and specially designed buildings echo the beauty of the surrounding Bluegrass horse country, while programming and activities harness humanity’s relationship with horse breeds throughout the globe.
Kelleys Island residents welcome the return each spring of their “feathered tourists” — songbirds, waterfowl, and raptors that pass through on their way to Canada.
So it was a rather obvious decision for the island’s innkeepers to band together to create an event around it. “Nest with the Birds” began in the 1980s as a way to drum up some early-season bookings by offering guided hikes and migration-related programs for birdwatchers.
Color and texture are tried-and-true ways to add interest to your garden, but gardeners may not always stop to consider shapes. Contrast feathery with bold, tall and slender with wide and round, or any other variations you can imagine. Here are a few plants that just might inspire you.
Cannas are wonderful large additions to any garden, be it a border or a foundation bed. The many varieties provide gorgeous, exotic blooms in a variety of colors, but sometimes the leaves are the stars.
Renovations can be the perfect time to improve your home’s energy efficiency. To make sure you get those energy savings, it’s important to do some planning right from the beginning.
The first step is to educate yourself so you can be in control of your project. Helpful, easy-to-understand energy-efficiency information is available for virtually any area of your home and any renovation project.
It’s easy to find Joe Bodis’s property in Huron County, a few miles southeast of New London, Ohio. Just look for the house surrounded by “weeds.”
In actuality, those “weeds” are a carefully planned and developed island of wildlife habitat in a sea of corn and soybean fields. “When I first moved in, neighbors used to stop and ask when I was going to mow the weeds,” Bodis says. “Now they ask what things they can do on their property to attract wildlife.”
A retired pharmaceuticals salesman and member of Firelands Electric Cooperative, Bodis moved to his 5 acres in 2002.
