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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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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.
White-Footed Mouse
We’ve blogged before about a white-footed mouse in the house. We read the story to our kids when they were little. Time after time we snuggled down with the book and they never got tired of hearing why the mouse might be cute but doesn’t belong in the house. A recent...
Just What Are Gaiters, Spats, and Puttees?
Getting ready to brave the elements? Remember to keep your legs and feet protected.
Winter Owls
We live in a world of dizzying change in how we live, drive, and communicate. Like many people, we struggle to keep up with change and stay modern, so it’s comforting to know that some things simply don’t change. Fortunately, winter owls don’t change. In March 1982...
Prostate Cancer Adventure
Phone Call Sets In Motion Action In early 2005 Rich received an attention-grabbing phone call that set in motion a prostate Cancer Adventure. “Are you sitting down?” Dr. Rippentrop asked. “Yup,” Rich replied. “You have prostate cancer. Come to my office tomorrow and...
Find Joy in January
Lots to Experience in January (reworked from the Patterson’s “Iowa’s Wild Side” column originally in the Cedar Rapids Gazette) Winter in Iowa is erratic. Mild. January thaws. Grey, damp, and achy mornings. Frigid. Blustery. Sunny, sparkling days when all is right. We...