Barns and a Brick Church

The barns shown here are near the town of Strasburg, Virginia. The brick church is in town on Ash Street. It is the Strasburg Assembly of God.

Sharing with InSpired Sunday 

and The Barn Collective.

Various Animals, Late March

 It's time for Saturday's Critters and I'm starting off with some deer I saw in Shenandoah River State Park. They stared at me briefly before heading for the safety of the woods.

Next is a dog we saw in a little gallery.

Today is also Caturday, I'm told. I filtered a picture I took of a shelter cat.

Below that is a sign I saw in the shelter. Take care around cats; they can scratch. I actually got scratched by a cat the other day.

Squirrels can scratch too, but this one looks friendly enough. (Don't try to pick him up though!)

Let's go to Rockingham County for the last two shots. I was surprised to see donkeys in an unfenced yard in Massanetta Springs.

It was starting to rain when we saw mallard ducks in Bridgewater.

Park Views, Wetlands, Blossoms

Willy Nilly Friday

1. The entire length of Skyline Drive reopened today. The ice is gone from the roads and the fallen trees are finally cleared. Now we can drive the length of Shenandoah National Park and see views like this. 

Skywatch: Sunset over Page County.

2. I have some more views of Blandy to share. (See Wednesday's post for some with birds.) The black and white view is looking into a shady section of the wetlands. There are both shadows and reflections in this shot.

3. From there, I turned and looked up the lane and saw some people walking on Wilkins Loop.

Blandy is a beautiful park with an educational mission. It is a research and learning facility, open to the public and also known as the State Arboretum of Virginia.

4. Here's a pond on the other side of the lane.

5. We have plenty of water but no serious flooding. I've seen photos of the terrible flooding in other places, especially Nebraska and Madagascar. To me it is obvious that the world can expect more of this because there's more moisture in the atmosphere, the result of melting glaciers. Yet many people don't believe in climate change and refuse to consider preparing for it.

Well, people laughed at Noah too.

6. Spring is finally here! We are seeing early flowers and the trees are coming back to life. 

Floral Friday and Friday Bliss.

New Viewing Deck in Wildwood Park

We've been to Bridgewater many times and it was always a little frustrating that a fence blocked the view of the North River rushing over the dam. Recently the park was improved with an observation platform, making it easy to get unobstructed photos of the river. We stopped by there on Monday to see it.

Rain arrived shortly after we did so we didn't stay long, plus the light was getting dim for pictures. But I'm thankful that the view at this nice park has been improved. The overlook is called Downrush Vista. The roar of the water is a wondrous sound!

From here, the North River flows down to Port Republic, where it joins the South River and becomes the South Fork of the Shenandoah.

Sharing with Fences and Thankful Thursday.

Yesterday at Blandy with Birds

Sharing with Wordless Wednesday

and Wild Bird Wednesday.

Culpeper Courthouse, c. 1870

 Culpeper, Virginia.

Sharing with:
Tuesday Treasures
and Wordless Wednesday on Tuesday.

Colorful Commerce Street, Culpeper.

Another photographer tipped me off about a series of murals near the Visitors Center in Culpeper. Since I already had a trip there on my to-do list, I drove down and found them.

They are behind St. Stephen's Episcopal Church along a parking lot wall. I was surprised by how many there were.

The church has a building next to this where, among other things, volunteers distribute food to people in need.

Monday Murals and Mosaic Monday.

Barns and a Baptist Church, Strasburg.

The farm buildings are on the outskirts of Strasburg. The church is on Ash Street in town.

Themes and memes remind me to photograph subjects that I might otherwise drive by without really noticing.

Barns are not only picturesque, but they are also vanishing as the years go by. Some get replaced by housing and others just fall apart after they are no longer needed. Farming has changed and is often done on a large scale using modern methods.

Churches are also picturesque. I like seeing their windows and the steeples reaching for the sky.

Esbie Baptist Church was built in 1913. I found this information on Shenandoah Stories.

Sharing with The Barn Collective, InSpired Sunday, and Shadow Shot Sunday. 

Birds and Animals on National Puppy Day.

Saturday's a good time for sharing critter pictures, and I just downloaded some from my game camera. There were hundreds of photos of geese walking by, but this one caught them flying off. Unlike Canada geese, white geese don't fly very far.

The best night photo on the card was this one of a deer. (I cropped all three of the game camera photos since it does not compose, it just shoots when it senses movement.)

We have a possum in our yard who comes out at night. He appeared in a number of pictures but since he is small, they were mostly not clear.

Next are a few bird pictures taken with my trusty old Nikon. It has a few problems but the zoom still works, so I keep it by the window for photographing birds and squirrels.

The bird in the vertical shot is a goldfinch. It looks dark because the finch sock cast a shadow on it.

Next we see a mallard duck and then a male cardinal.

I'd Rather Be Birdin'

Frank is thinking about getting a cat so yesterday we visited the SPCA in Winchester. I see that they have an "Adopt a Unicorn" event coming up!

We saw some nice cats but he wants a black kitten.

The Caturday blog hop challenges us to post a digitally altered photo of an animal. All I did to this vertical shot was to duplicate the layer and use a Diffuse Glow filter in Photoshop.

Although this post already has plenty of images, I wanted to share a squirrel photo.

And finally, today is National Puppy Day. We don't have a puppy right now so I found an old photo of Lynn with Spotsy.  He was a pointer mix. 

Water, a Worm Moon, and a Little More

Willy Nilly Friday

1. This pretty pond is along a back road near Long Branch.

Weekend Reflections

2. I 've had this image for a while and it intrigues me but makes me uncomfortable too. A tree branches out over Cook's Creek in a deformed way.

Black and White Weekend.

3. They call this week's full moon the "Worm Moon" because worms come out around the time of the spring equinox. It's not a pretty name, but it's a pretty sight.

I leaned my camera against a post to hold it still because I'm out of the tripod habit. Out of seven images, only two showed good detail. I used a zoom lens and later cropped the image.

Skywatch Friday

4. I saw this sign in Strasburg and liked it enough to pull into the parking lot to take a picture.

Signs, Signs.

5. This is a cell phone picture I took in the rain yesterday. I sent it to the state highway department with an online request to fix the drainage on this road. They are actually very responsive to small road complaints.