By Michael D. Clark
The Cincinnati Enquirer

WEST CHESTER TWP. - At 12:14 p.m. Friday, sitting under a 30-foot-high plastic ice-cream cone, little Spencer Combs got a jump on spring.

Will Terrell from the Midwest Fish Cedar Farm releases some rainbow trout into Sharon Lake. (Tony Jones photo)

The 4-year-old was the first customer of The Cone, a popular ice-cream shop off Tylersville Road and a local landmark featuring a giant ice-cream swirl on its roof.

Though spring begins today, ) for Spencer the season really starts when The Cone opens, which was Friday at noon.

As Spencer happily attacked his chocolate and vanilla swirl cone, his mother, Betsy Combs, smiled and said The Cone's opening means more to her, and her children, than any notation on a wall calendar.

"When The Cone opens it means ... fun is here and summer is coming," the West Chester resident said.

Across the Tristate, signs of the new season emerged Friday: lawns damp from melted snow. Children tossing baseballs. Park lakes being stocked with fish. Stores displaying stacks of lawn and garden supplies.

For Scott Odley spring's arrival is heralded not by a calendar date but when the weather warms up enough for people to start thinking about sticking their hands into the ground.

Odley is manager of Gear's Florist and Garden Center in West Chester and, though Friday's chilly mid-day temperatures in the low 40s brought only an occasional customer in the Tylersville Road store, he was ready for the start of the planting season.

"For a lot of gardeners, the beginning of spring is the first time of starting to get the drab color out of their gardens. They start planting pansies and changing mulch in their yards to get that first burst of color," said the 14-year veteran of retail gardening.

Although today's weather is expected to bring some showers, the temperatures, forecast in the low 60s, will have a lot of people thinking about the planting season.

After a few cooler days, the balmy weather will return Wednesday, with temperatures reaching into the upper 60s.

In Fairfield, Juanita Kocheck said she believes the "real" start of spring isn't today but later, on April 4, when daylight-saving time comes shining after months of cabin-fever-inducing early sunsets.

The beginning of longer days soon will have more Greater Cincinnatians thinking about getting outside "after being cooped up inside all winter," said Kocheck.

She should know. She and her husband own the Fairfield Golf Center off Dixie Highway in Butler County.

The center's expansive grounds are dotted with some of the spring season's more popular toys - golf driving tees, putting greens, baseball batting cages and a giant putt-putt golf course.

Only a few hardy golfers were swinging away Friday from heated driving tees in special cubicles, but after 15 years running the seasonal business, Kocheck knows crowds will return once the extra hour of light is added to the end of the day.

"When the time changes, ... everybody will get excited about getting outside."

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E-mail mclark@enquirer.com