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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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Fire In the Forest and Smoke Everywhere
Smoke Gets In Our Eyes We sat on our deck on a June 2024 evening and breathed air carrying the season’s first waves of smoke wafting from Canadian fires. Last summer the smoke was so thick visibility shrank to less than a mile. We don’t remember such thick smoke in...
Dangerous Animals
Gosh, the media have people scared to get outside thinking there are snakes hanging from trees, bears ready to attack and mountain lions luring about. Really?
Raccoon Kerfluffle
A raccoon kerfluffle with loud growling and snarling startled us to nearly jump from our chairs one May evening. It came from an oak tree 20 feet away from the house and close to our bird feeder. A flashlight beam on that pitch-black night revealed the culprits -...
Delicious Sockeye Salmon
On an April morning, we discovered three fish that had spent their lives circling the North Pacific Ocean on our porch in Iowa. Three delicious sockeye salmon landed on our porch. We quickly converted them to delicious meals. How’s that possible? Back In Time The...
Legacy Fishing Reel
Legacy Fishing Reel Our son-in-law, Brian Ohlen, shared a photo of a delightful legacy. He is grinning as he works his reel hauling in a fish from Alaskan waters. It wasn’t just an ordinary reel. He is using a legacy fishing reel. Rich’s father, Henry Patterson, was...
Morel Surprise
Serendipity A surprise morel mushroom sighting was a serendipitous find for Marion. It happened on May Day 2024, in an area of Winding Pathways we’re rewilding. While seeking blooming bluebells and emerging May Apples she spotted the delicious fungus poking through...
Field Pussytoes – A Delightful Lawn Surprise
Field Pussytoes delight us! (And, we plan to encourage them) Early this spring a lawn care company dropped by and offered to spray our lawn. “We’ll keep the weeds out,” said the enthusiastic young man. He knocked at the wrong door. We take joy in our lawn’s diversity,...
Whiterock Conservancy
The steep climb got us huffing and puffing until we crested the hill and looked around. Beneath us was a spacious pond and on the far hillside cattle grazed in the evening's dwindling light. Oncoming darkness, combined with tired leg muscles, encouraged us to circle...
No-till Gardening – An Easy Way to Soil Health
Spring Ritual After this weird winter, most of us in North America are simply ready for spring and want to get outside. Some folks take initiative and start garden and flower seeds indoors then transfer them outside when the weather moderates. Are you ready to work...
Handy Tools
A rarely used handy tool made our lives easier after we found a box on our porch. It contained a remote weather station our two grown children chipped in to buy it for us. Many parts needed to be assembled. That would have been difficult had we not been "tool...
Lyme Disease Update
Easy Peasy Life for Ticks The recent warm winter was easy on heating bills and back muscles used to shovel snow, but it may mark an early return of Lyme Disease and the ticks that spread it. At Winding Pathways we take a multi-pronged approach to reducing the odds of...
Changing Directions for Our State’s Rivers
Here we are revisiting water quality, resources and diminished supplies. Iowa’s Wildside column of the 1980s addressed this and we seem not to learn at all.
Invasive Duo – Chinese Lanternfly and Tree of Heaven
Bright! Beautiful! Ominous! As we walked across a New Jersey parking lot last summer an amazingly colorful, and new-to-us, insect fluttered in front of us. It had a gorgeous creamy white and bright red body covered with black spots. Identifying it was easy and...
Predawn “Stargirl” Labyrinth Walk
Come, walk with me. Notice like Stargirl. Sights. Sounds. Smells. Textures. Gratitude.
Dupuytren’s Contracture – Curse of the Vikings!
Dupuytren’s Contracture: The Curse of the Vikings! Usually, we blog about nature and yards at Winding Pathways, but once in a while, we digress. This one’s about Rich’s Dupuytren’s adventure. But it is related to nature, as putting on gloves and manipulating his hand...
Knot Just Lumber
Want great local lumber? Check out resources and options before heading to big box stores. You might find lumber, wood products, and classes locally.