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).
What is Spring?
What is that? A Patch of green! This spring the upper Midwest languished in browns, blacks, and slate landscapes underneath piles of grimy snow with grey skies blanketing overhead. Meanwhile, the South was vibrant in green expanses of fields and brilliant bursts of...
Wren Antics
As lingering snow banks melt we look forward to the arrival of our favorite spring guests. They arrive in late April, but we put out the welcoming mat a month ahead. For many years a pair of house wrens have nested right outside our dining room window. We laugh at...
Canada Geese
Learn about the cycle of goose courting and parenting.
Do Birds Like Milo?
We recently bought a bag of cheap wild bird seed. It contained mostly milo with some sunflower, cracked corn, and millet mixed in. We should have known better but dumped a scoop of it on top of our platform feeder at Winding Pathways and watched what happened. Birds...
How Do I Raise Baby Chicks?
In the past few years, thousands of Americans have begun tending small flocks of chickens in their backyards. For most folks, it’s a new hobby, but we’ve been at it far longer. Rich began raising chickens in his suburban backyard when he was eight or nine years old -...
What Kind of Cherry Trees Should I Plant?
Catalog Dreaming While subzero cold enveloped Winding Pathways we discovered delightful seed and nursery catalogs in our mailbox. Leafing through their photos of rosy ripe tomatoes, peaches, and sweet corn made us dream of warm days as the frigid wind whistled around...
Urban Coyotes
At 2 a.m. one frigid February night we were startled awake by coyotes yipping and yapping right behind our house at Winding Pathways. The next morning, we discovered their tracks all around our snowy yard. It explains why we haven’t seen many cottontail rabbits in...
Walking the Labyrinth in the Snow
The subtleties of walking a labyrinth in fresh snow or in the dark have not been lost on me. Muscle memory, night vision, and simple observation help navigate the terrain when obvious landmarks are obscure. Before the snow fell, when I walk the labyrinth in the dark,...
Deer Entertainment in Our Backyard
Guest Blogger Nancy Garberson shares these observations and photos with Winding Pathways. This time of year, we call it “wild kingdom” in our backyard because we see deer every day. All kinds of birds and tracks in the snow from the nocturnal creatures dot the snow as...
Owls and “Mouseterious” Happenings
Guest Blogger, Sue Fehsinger of New Hampshire Mice got into the hybrid system of my Prius and destroyed it. They also got into our greenhouse and ate some important seeds my husband Bob was growing. These critters are a common problem, but we have always used live...
Polar Vortex Labyrinth Lessons
My daily labyrinth walk on Wednesday, January 30, 2019, in the middle of the Polar Vortex coughed up several lessons. In spite of the bitterly cold morning, the snowshoes strap that slipped off and glasses that fogged up, it was a great walk! Nothing I want to...
Screaming Down Pokagon State Park’s Toboggan Run
In December 2018 we spent a delightful two days in and around Pokagon State Park. It’s a great place to visit………..and scream like we did as we zipped down their famous toboggan run at nearly 40 miles an hour. Read about the Park and Steuben County in our travel...
2018 Gratitudes – Why They Matter
A look back at many gratitudes.
Keeping Binoculars Handy
We celebrated the first day of 2019 with a drive in the country. An inch of crusty snow had fallen a few nights earlier, and the countryside looked wintry. Wildlife seemed tucked in on this frosty morning, but as we rounded a gravel road’s bend, we spotted 20 huge...
Wood Stove Woes
When we bought our first home back in 1979, we soon installed a new wood stove. It was a Lange brand made in Denmark. The stove kept our home toasty warm the next 30 winters. When we moved to Winding Pathways, we had to leave our trusty Lange at the old...
How Do You Track Animals in Winter?
When the next soft snow falls, go tracking outside! A late December 2019 skiff of snow delighted us. There was not enough of the white stuff to shovel but the thin white blanket that covered our yard revealed who visited the night before. The dimples of deer tracks...