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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Scarlet Tanagers
We’re lucky. Scarlet tanagers nest near us. Winding Pathways abuts Faulkes Heritage Woods, a protected 110-acre forest of mostly monstrous oak trees. So, every May we’re delighted as this brilliant bird arrives and sets up home. Male scarlet tanagers appear at our...
Would You Sit With George Floyd and the Policemen?
We wish that we could have sat on our back deck with George Floyd and the policemen who caused his tragic death. This may sound strange. Yet, we know the healing power of nature. We wish that they and all could experience the peacefulness of the trees, grasses,...
Goose Daycare
We like geese. Yes, they leave piles of poop on trails and urban grassy areas. And, that is a pain. We’re not fond of running the gauntlet of goose dirt on the sidewalk. Still, we like geese. They recently made us laugh with an antic we found hysterical. While driving...
Toads in Spring
For many years Rich wrote a nature column for the Cedar Rapids GAZETTE about little known aspects of natural history common in suburbia. He was amazed when more people responded to a column on toads than anything else he had written. People like toads. Some readers...
Prairie Renaissance continued
Planting Day Saturday, May 9th was our big day. We planted our newest prairie and we’ll tell you how after we explain the ground preparation we did before a single seed was dropped to the ground. We’ve established several prairies with no ground preparation by simply...
Prairie Renaissance continued
Catch up on how we are converting lawn to pollinator patches.
Prairie Renaissance – A Review and Preview
What's to Love About a Prairie? We love prairie. Prairie is color. Flowers yellow, red, blue, and every hue in between shine through tall grasses. Prairie beckons flying flowers…...butterflies as well as birds, bunnies, and other interesting animals. Compared to a...
Can You Introduce Kids to Bird Watching in Novel Coronavirus Times?
Can you introduce kids to bird watching and get "outside" during novel coronavirus times? We read a short article written by a diehard baseball fan. She had bought season tickets to her beloved St. Louis Cardinals just before the pandemic hit. When the virus shut...
Refresher On How to Be With COVID-19
With Kathleen Horan, president and CEO of AbbeHealth We are all now several months into coping with the novel coronavirus pandemic and subsequent COVID-19 disease. It’s felt like having to walk across a high wire above Niagara Falls with no safety equipment. That...
Smokey Bear Re-Visited
Smokey Bear is an enduring figure.
How Can You Make Your Home and Yard Safer from Lyme Disease?
Lyme Disease is something you just don’t want. Rich has had it twice. It was no fun, and he was lucky. Nearly as soon as symptoms appeared, he visited our family physician. She prescribed a powerful antibiotic that worked wonders and left him with no lingering...
Why is Sunshine Important?
Sunshine On Our Shoulders, Makes Us Happy! We love John Denver’s famous Sunshine song almost as much as we appreciate sunshine! After a long gloomy winter, the sun finally appeared toward the end of March. We welcomed it into our home and went outside to soak it up....
Do You Know These Two Free Wild Spring Greens?
Our Yards Offer Nutrition Every spring we look forward to eating delicious, free, wild greens that grow in our yard and just about every place people live. Having an ability to identify, pick, prepare, and eat wild foods gives us some comfort in this age of...
Why Do Birds Hit Windows?
*Note: Our assessment of WindowAlert is based on our experiences both from purchasing the company's product and a complimentary set of decals to try. Last fall as Rich was walking along the outside of the Cedar Rapids Public Library and found a tiny dead warbler on...
What Can You do When You are Stuck at Home?
Stuck at home? A tiny microbe is sure changing the lives of people worldwide. Unexpectedly, meetings and schools have closed and transportation is disrupted as uncertainty runs rampant. With every challenge comes an opportunity. We’re sticking close to home at...
Why Do You Come to Winding Pathways?
Like millions of Americans who live in rural or semi-rural areas we don’t have access to a city sewer and rely on our septic tank to safely dispose of waste. We’re lucky at Winding Pathways. Our home is built on an ancient sand dune with steep topography. It’s...