No one could have known when Brad Ryan’s parents divorced years ago that it would result in a long, record-breaking, heartwarming journey.
Joy lives in Duncan Falls, a sleepy town nestled against the rolling hills along the Muskingum River southeast of Zanesville, where she’s a longtime member of New Concord-based Guernsey-Muskingum Electric Cooperative. When they finally reconnected, Brad noticed she was suffering some health issues, and clearly needed a change.
Are your favorite hiking trails somehow growing inexplicably longer and steeper? If so, congratulations! You’re a “seasoned citizen.” For most outdoor folks, that hard-won status usually kicks in sometime around age 50.
After a lengthy search spanning several months, I eventually found just the right tree — growing, of all places, on my own property 100 yards behind the house. About a dozen feet high, it was a thin sugar maple that had grown straight up for about 3 feet, spiraled for 2 feet, then grew straight again. Perfect!
If you consider yourself an outdoors person, you do know what poison ivy looks like, right?
Are you sure?
Poison ivy wears many disguises. It can appear as a single plant, a group of plants, a shrub, a ground vine, or even a climbing vine. And its infamous “leaves of three” can be as small as a 50-cent piece or as large as your hand. In addition, different-shaped leaves (actually leaflets) —their margins smooth, lobed, or toothed — can appear on the same plant.
Anyone who recalls the thrill of getting a good push while learning to ride a bicycle can appreciate the growing popularity of electric bikes — bicycles outfitted with electric motors that lend extra oomph to your pedaling.
On Katherine Harrison’s farm in Groveport, every animal has a job. The chickens offer eggs. The cats provide comfort. And the goats help teach yoga.
The idea for the program arose organically, says Harrison, owner and operator of Harrison Farm. (Her secondary title, she says, is “chief minion” to the goats.) She met yoga instructor Dana Bernstein in 2016 while she was planning Bernstein’s wedding, and the two hit it off.
When spring’s first warm breezes blow over Ohio’s landscapes, there are plenty of folks — children and adults alike — who think, “It’s a great day to fly a kite!”
The group’s name is a clever allusion to Cincinnati’s history as well as the group’s reason for existence. “Cincinnati used to be the pork-processing capital of the U.S.,” says longtime member John Graves of Fairfield, a retired registered nurse, who also explains that “P.I.G.S. Aloft” stands for “People Interested in Getting Stuff Aloft.”
“We don’t collect dues or elect officers,” Graves says. “We just get together to fly our kites and have fun. Anyone is welcome to join us.”
The January 2004 issue of Country Living magazine (now known as Ohio Cooperative Living) featured a story about Ohio’s 10 best places to view wildlife.
Gross, a 45-year member of Mount Gilead-based Consolidated Cooperative and retired from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife, says he has an “overwhelming fascination and appreciation for the beauty, complexity, and intricacy of the natural world.”
That certainly comes across in his writing and contributes to the popularity and longevity of “Woods, Waters, and Wildlife,” but he says there’s more to it as well.
For years, hunters have been using trail cameras to scout for game, which, in the Buckeye State, usually means white-tailed deer. But, interestingly, a growing segment of the trail-camera market now has nonhunters purchasing the relatively inexpensive cameras to capture wildlife images 24/7.
Trail cameras take both still photos and video clips of wildlife and provide endlessly entertaining images. If there’s someone on your Christmas list who would like to try this fun and fascinating outdoor hobby — or if you’d like to try it yourself — here are a few suggestions to help get you started, based on my own experience:
Tucked in a scenic area just west of Alliance, Beech Creek Botanical Gardens and Nature Preserve is an enchanting space to discover nature, offering a breath of fresh air for people of all ages.
Beech Creek’s multiple gardens, trails, exhibits, and events — from life-size Lincoln Logs and treehouses in the playground to a caterpillar nursery and annual butterfly parade — are enjoyed yearly by more than 40,000 visitors.
Here are a few of our favorite spaces.
Roman Mast’s backyard looks like a bird-feeding test kitchen.
“I have my oriole feeders out by the last week in April,” Mast says. “Through the years, I’ve tried a lot of different foods to attract orioles, including sliced oranges, but my main food now is simply grape jelly.” Orioles and a few other species, such as rose-breasted grosbeaks, gray catbirds, and some warblers, seem to love the stuff. “A red-bellied woodpecker even comes to my jelly feeders occasionally,” Mast says.
