Welcome to Winding Pathways
Winding Pathways encourages you to create a wonderous yard, whether that yard is an expansive acreage, a suburban lot or a condominium balcony. Go outside and play!
Join our email list
Sign up for FREE Winding Pathways emails (approximately weekly).
All Fish Are Awesome!
Here’s a great kids’ book about fish! Just right to read on cool autumn nights with a youngster.
Winding Pathways Goes Glamping!
Camping. Glamping. What is the difference?
Delightful Wildflower Progression
Serendipitous Derecho We sat on our back deck one early September evening remarking on the delightful wildflower progression we’ve enjoyed since early April. It is the serendipitous result of a disaster. On August 10, 2020, a derecho’s 140-mile-an-hour wind knocked...
Create Natural Beauty
Catch up with the Pattersons and their landscaping that welcomes plants, animals and people.
Disaster Preparation Makes WeatheringDisasters Easier
Make it Easier on Yourself We’ve written this before and will write it again: Simple disaster preparation makes sense. A few days after Hurricane Beryl knocked out electricity for thousands of homes in the Houston area, we turned on the evening news. A reporter...
Furless Tailed Squirrels Revisited
A few years ago, after seeing many squirrels with nearly naked tails we researched and posted a blog in February 2022. Furless Tailed Squirrels. The response amazed us. People from around the world visited it and still do every day. We had no idea this condition was...
Eatin’ Weeds
Eatin' Weeds We don’t just pull weeds. We eat them! Every summer gardeners spend hours pulling, digging, and spraying weeds that pop up overnight and grow like – Weeds! Marion’s family, especially grew up eatin’ weeds. Raised on a small, hardscrabble New Hampshire...
Can You Grow Pineapples in Virginia?
Can you grow pineapples from the tops? Check this out and see one gardener’s experience.
First Egg!
August 26th brought an unexpected and delightful surprise. We found an egg in our coop! Bringing the garden season's first tomato, cucumber, or summer squash into the kitchen is always an event to celebrate, but it doesn’t compare to the excitement of finding the...
Fortunate Foraging Blackberries
time to pick blackberries.
Cottontail Rabbit Capers
Have you noticed the abundance of the cottontail rabbit this summer? While they can create mischief as in eating desired plants, they also are fun to watch. Winding Pathway’s resident cottontail rabbits give us delightful evening entertainment. Shortly after sunset, a...
Are There Really Waterfalls in Iowa?
There it is! A Waterfall. There’s a second. Wow, just upstream is a third. Three waterfalls in one Iowa stretch of stream! How can that be in such a flat state? Waterfalls bring mental images of water tumbling down steep hillsides where it plunges...
Kendal’s Appeal as a Senior Residence
This blog was first published in the Cedar Rapids Gazette, on June 30, 2024 As Dad and Mom entered their 90s they increasingly struggled maintaining the safety and cleanliness of the home they’d lived in for 60 years. Despite our urging they resisted moving to a...
Two Rural Views: Iowa’s Rich Heritage
Winding Pathways is near the edge of town, making it easy to drive into the country and enjoy rural views. Mostly our car traverses Iowa’s abundant corn and soybean fields, but two recent trips gave exceptional views of different vegetation that bloomed in bright...
White Clover
We recently discovered an amusing irony created by one of the most common lawn plants - white clover. Sometimes called Dutch Clover, this low-growing plant graces unsprayed lawns in temperate regions across the globe. Normally, we discourage nonnative plants at...
The Serendipity of Giant Trees
This is a story of the serendipity of giant trees. On a recent long drive to New Jersey, we planned to visit a grove of giant white pine trees in Pennsylvania’s Cook Forest State Park. Plans don’t always go perfectly, but sometimes serendipity happens. It sure did for...