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!
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What’s the Deal with Furless Tailed Squirrels?
The birds we share Winding Pathways with have a good life. Our property has old trees, prairies, and bushes to provide lots of natural food plus nooks and crannies for chickadees, nuthatches, and other species to hide and shelter from tough weather. Birds aren’t the...
What’s a Nor’Easter?
New England's Nor'easter January 29-20, 2022 by Susan Fellows, guest blogger What is a Nor-easter? Dover, NH, 4:00 a.m. Temperature 5 degrees. The wind chill is probably close to -10 degrees. Wind gusts 40-45 mph throughout the day. What is a blizzard? Wind gusts...
How Do Squirrels Foil Hawks?
How this urbanite saw a squirrel foil a hawk.
Chickadees Never Go the the Dentist – But Have to Eat Rocks
Millions of families love watching chickadees, nuthatches and woodpeckers visit backyard feeders. A joyful daily task is bringing them a day’s supply of sunflower seeds, millet, or even cracked corn. But, often an important part of their diet is ignored. Birds lack...
What Was Good About 2021?
2021 Retrospective At the end of last year, I regarded 2021 with a jaundiced eye. Then, I read the little gratitudes I had kept in the jar all year and realized the good that did happen and that we created. Below is a summary. Labyrinths The year 2020 ended with the...
EGO-centric!
Back in October, we took a gamble. We bought an electric snowblower. Our driveway at Winding Pathways is about 440 feet long, and Iowa gets plenty of snow. It’s too much to shovel, so years ago we bought a gas snow blower. It worked for the first winter but then it...
Did You Attend a One-Room School?
One-Room School Houses Readers’ Reminisce Note: The original article appeared in the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Sunday, December 19, 2021. We invited readers to share their reminiscences and included here some that were in the original feature. We begin this blog with the...
Why Do Geese Love Lawn Mowers?
Artful Dodgers Walking one of Cedar Rapids’ trails sometimes is like a skier racing a slalom course. Instead of weaving between flags, pedestrians must dodge piles of goose poop. It wasn’t always that way. Before the mid-1980s few geese lived in town. Cedar Rapids...
Harvesting Snow
Use nature to capture snow that will replenish the soil in the growing season.
Now on to 2021 Labyrinth Walks!
Chronologically I trace the year in different labyrinths.
Save on Energy Bills Right NOW!
We knew natural gas prices were way up but our $80+ November bill both surprised and pleased us. Surprise: That’s a high bill for us. Pleased: Our efforts at energy efficiency and wise house management kept the bill from being higher. Nearly everyone can reduce...
Mysterious Disappearance of 2020 Labyrinths
Where Did the 2020 Labyrinth Blog Go? I'm curious what happened to the 2020 labyrinths blog! While I mainly walked the Phoenix Harmony Labyrinth in our yard, I know I walked other labyrinths. Edith Starr Chase's lovely one at Wickiup Hill on a magical Winter Solstice...
November Makes 12
Meeting a Challenge A few years ago, we received an email from the National Wildlife Federation asking us, and millions of others, to camp in the backyard once during the summer. Upping the Ante We took it to heart and then went further. Over the past twelve months,...
How Hardy is the Eastern Red Cedar?
On a windy cold Thanksgiving afternoon, we did something nutty. After tossing buckets and shovels into our pickup we drove north until we spotted greenish foliage popping through the road ditches dry grass. There, we rescued six red cedar trees that are now at home in...
Deer and COVID-19
Two years ago, hardly anyone knew what the novel Coronavirus was, but since then this crafty virus and the nasty disease it causes, COVID-19, has hardly been all over the news. Like most people we thought it was a disease of only humans. We were astonished to learn...
Woolly Bear Fun
What are woolly bears?