Classic Cadillac and Lincoln Continental

Today I was in Front Royal and noticed this shiny blue Cadillac. When I reached the entrance to Shenandoah National Park, it was right behind me. Since they had to stop to pay the entrance fee, I had time to reach a parking spot so I could take a picture as they drove by.

I recognized it as a Cadillac, but I didn’t know the model because I am not a car enthusiast. Bing’s visual search engine says this is a 1960 Cadillac hearse.

Another classic car was behind it, but I wasn’t expecting it so I didn’t get a picture. Later, I saw them at an overlook. The drivers were doing what classic car enthusiasts do: checking out what’s under the hood.

The gray car is a Lincoln Continental, likely a 1965.

I saw a few other classic cars this weekend, so I guess there was a “Cruise In” nearby. I’ve been to a couple of those, but got bored quickly. It’s more exciting to see these cars in the wild.

I remember when fashionable cars were long like these. Their gas mileage was only about 12 MPG, but gas cost something like $.29 a gallon.

None of the cars that my parents drove looked like these. I think they only bought used Chevrolets when I was growing up.

Other Scenes at this Overlook

 

Mosaic Blog Hop

Barn on a Sunny Day

This was not today. Today was rainy. So was yesterday. It looks like the next few days are going to be rainy also, but that can change.

I can’t complain. We desperately need rain. The state of Virginia is officially in drought stage. Strasburg is already asking people to conserve water. Usually this doesn’t happen until July or August.

I had appointments today: Physical therapy and the eye specialist. I also picked up a prescription and had blood drawn for diagnostic tests. I don’t seem to have anything serious, but I have a bunch of nuisance problems plus ever-present fatigue. Yesterday I saw a new doctor and I’m grateful that he’s trying to be thorough. At least he doesn’t chalk up my concerns to old age! 

I was able to ignore my age for a long time, but my body reminds me every day that I’m not 39 anymore. Or 59!

Overall, I feel fortunate. I was born after World War II, and I’ve lived through somewhat of a golden age. The economy was good for most of it. It may fall apart now, with conflict and corruption threatening our country’s strength.  I hope not. 

My parents survived the Great Depression, followed by war. They taught me how to be frugal. Will that be enough? The health problems of getting older are a lot more expensive than I expected.

I don’t mean to go off on a tangent, so I’ll stop. I just wanted to say that my generation was very fortunate, in spite of challenges that we had to face.

A Big Tree and a Tree Mural

Last week I went to the dentist in Front Royal. My appointment went quickly, and afterward I stopped at a farm store called The Giving Tree. I wondered if the name was inspired by the huge tree at the edge of the parking lot.

Inside the store, there’s a colorful collage-style mural of a tree.

When I looked at the big tree outside, I noticed it had the seed pods of a maple, but the leaves looked different. I took a picture of a leafy branch and asked my phone to identify it. It’s a box elder, which is a type of maple. There are also other names for it, and the latin name is acer negundo.

Box elder saplings sometimes grow in thickets near rivers. I remember feeling very concerned when passing through them because they looked like poison ivy, and I am quite allergic to it. Later I felt foolish when I found out what they were, but I was just now relieved to read in Wikipedia that saplings are often mistaken for poison ivy. I am so glad it was not just me being paranoid!

Also, the leaves are so different from other maples that some botanists think they are a totally different species. The seed pods, however, are distinctly maple-like, and will eventually turn brown and float down, spinning like helicopters. 

Mosaic Monday / Murals

Fruit and Patterns

The City Daily Photo theme for May 1st is "Fruit." I took a picture of apples in a grocery store, but I hoped to find something more interesting.

 I stopped at a produce stand today, but they just had some melons and one other fruit. I don’t have any fresh fruit at home because I can’t eat raw fruit without my gums swelling, and my tongue feeling sore. I can eat certain cooked fruits, and my standby is applesauce. That’s definitely not photogenic.

I looked around my kitchen and found some canned cherries. I opened them, but they were dull-colored and mushy. I ate some with dinner. 

I did notice that a pan full of water caught a reflection of the window blinds. I shook it lightly and created patterns.

Tennis, Anyone?

When I took Charlie to the W. O. Riley Park on Monday, the parking lot was full and the tennis courts were busy. Students were playing, apparently in a tournament. Families were there watching.

It was a nice day for tennis: Not too hot. I still remember taking tennis lessons as a young teen, and it was summer and very hot. I walked home with my brother with sweat pouring into my eyes. I finished the series of lessons, but decided not to pursue the sport because I didn’t like getting sweaty. 

White Azalea Blossoms

Azaleas are blooming in spite of our up and down temperatures. Many of our other blossoms suffered from frosts that followed early hot days. I hear that the apple blossoms were hard-hit, and orchard owners will take a loss this year.

My childhood home was surrounded by azaleas and dogwoods, as well as tall oaks. 

Beagle Drama

Before I turn the blog over to Charlie for his brief report, I feel compelled to say something about the Ridglan Farms beagles. They are confined in a breeding facility in Wisconsin which is similar to the place in Virginia where Charlie was born and spent his puppyhood. Both facilities got in trouble for not treating the dogs humanely. The one where Charlie was born was closed after repeatedly failing to keep their promises to bring the conditions up to acceptable levels. Ridglan Farms has denied the charges against them, but agreed to give up its breeding license on July 1st as part of a deal to avoid prosecution for animal cruelty.

The beagles are bred to be sold to laboratories or veterinary schools, where some of them will suffer painful experiments. This is sad enough, but made worse by knowing that the breeders are not meeting government standards for animal care. (I try not to think about the awful details because it’s painful to picture my own dog being hungry and dirty and traumatized, with his life and health in danger. There were undercover videos made at Envigo in Virginia, but I decided not to watch them.)

Activists are concerned about the health and safety of the dogs at Ridglan Farms. There are no guarantees as to what will happen to the beagles, and a couple of attempts have been made to rescue them. Last weekend, a protest turned violent when some animal lovers attempted to breach the fence around the facility. They were met with rubber bullets and tear gas from law enforcement, and  some of the activists suffered injuries requiring emergency room visits. Photos from the scene showed law enforcement officers  brutalizing civilians. 

I have no answers for questions of when do wrongs make a right. Personally, I would probably not trespass or try to steal puppies, but I understand the motivation of the people who did. The animal welfare system is not working fast enough in this case. And once again, we saw policemen acting like sadistic bullies. Ugh!

They are political leaders in Wisconsin who are trying to get the beagles free before they suffer any more. There are questions about conflict of interest in the Dane County sheriff’s department. I hope the beagles are released soon, and placed with animal rescue organizations that can get them adopted.

I’ll turn this over to Charlie now. I didn’t tell him about Ridglan Farms. I think he still has bad memories of his own.

🐶 Hi! Here I am coming back from one of my walks with Deborah and Sadie. Good times!

I have a couple of animals to show you, a cat and a horse.

Let me tell you about my afternoon yesterday. Mom took me to Seven Bends State Park again. It was warm so we went down to the river for a while.

We watched some birds, but they didn’t come very close. 

After that, we went to the car wash. Usually I keep my head down and try to nap, but I decided to watch this time.

It was noisy, but I was brave. Mom says I am growing up.

It’s the 22nd of April

Today is Earth Day! I am grateful for the beauty and bounty of this earth.

Today is also the birthday of my younger daughter, Marie. She continues to surprise me with her accomplishments. Since she stated clearly that she did not want any gifts, I made a donation to Heifer International in her honor, specifically to provide chickens and bees to a family to raise and make their lives better.

It’s Wild Bird Wednesday, so here are a couple of goldfinch pictures. The first one Is from three weeks ago, and I think the finch was just coming out of moulting. 

The next picture is an earlier one.

It’s Historic Garden Week in Virginia so today I went on a house and garden tour. It was lovely but involved a lot of walking and I have to say, I am getting too old for this! I was exhausted by the end of the day.

A Pause in Forestville

Forestville is a village in Shenandoah County that dates to around 1760. I have shared pictures of Forestville before, but not recently.

The Old Forestville School.

The reason I passed through there today was that I drove to my accountant’s office to sign my income tax forms that he prepared. It was a relief to get that done, even though I had to part with thousands of dollars. Fortunately, my taxes were not quite as high as I had feared.

This may have been my most complex tax return ever, at least in my eyes. I spent many hours organizing my records before I even took it to Mr. Yoder to complete. I have often done my own taxes, but I wanted to be sure every detail was correct. Not only did I sell the condo in 2025, but this represented the final sale in a series of tax-deferred exchanges. They started with an investment property in Prince William County, which I eventually sold after moving two hours away. That was too far to keep an eye on the property, so I bought a townhouse in Woodstock. Years later I sold it and bought an investment condo in Edinburg. This past year, I grew tired of being a landlord. I sold it after the tenants moved out. 

Tax-deferred exchange properties can be a great investment, but when you finally sell them, there are taxes to pay, and profit is based on an adjusted basis, not just the price you paid for it. There is also past depreciation to add in, and that’s the part that I don’t feel comfortable with computing.

I complicated my return by deciding to itemize deductions. I haven’t done this in years, and since I was originally not planning to, I didn’t keep those records in my tax folder. I had large medical expenses to calculate, mostly because I had a lot of dental work plus expensive prescriptions. I won’t start ranting right now about how limited the Medicare schedule is for prescriptions, but I have certainly complained to my family about this. 

Anyway, taxes are done. I will put all my file folders away tomorrow.Tonight I rest!

Not a Perfect Header Collage

At least It's Colorful.

This collage is an experiment. Maybe I will do it again with a better understanding of how to proceed.

I used digital images that I created using AI and combined them in PhotoCollage. I tried another app first, but it was not intuitive and I didn’t want to waste time trying to figure it out. Since I could not create the long image that I wanted, I combined two collages using Adobe Photoshop. 

My intent was to create a social media header that reflected my blogging interests. Out of curiosity, I asked Claude, an AI app, to list my top 10 interests based on my blog posts. It actually did a decent job. (I won’t get into why I think Artificial Intelligence is a misnomer, but I will say that its attempt to be ingratiating sounds insincere.)

So here is “Claude’s” analysis:

<<What a lovely blog! Based on the recent posts and post labels, here are your top ten interests as they come through in The View from Squirrel Ridge:

1. Birds — birdwatching, feeders, and identifying species like cardinals, finches, and sparrows comes up constantly 

 2. Dogs — Charlie is clearly a beloved companion and frequent star of the blog 

 3. Nature & Wildlife — squirrels, deer, cats, farm animals, and all kinds of critters 

 4. Gardens & Flowers — visiting gardens, photographing blooms, seasonal plants like Virginia bluebells and redbuds 

 5. Photography — the whole blog is built around daily photo-sharing 

 6. The Shenandoah Valley / Local Exploration — state parks, Woodstock, Strasburg, Winchester, and the surrounding area 

 7. Trees & Skies — a recurring subject in posts and photo linkups 

 8. Civil War History — you have a whole separate site (civilwarfieldtrips.com) and it appears as a post label 

 9. Arts & Crafts / Murals — street art, decorations, and creative sights you encounter on outings 

 10. AI / Technology — you have a separate AI image blog (Imagecroft) and tag posts with “Artificial Intel” 

It’s a beautifully consistent blog — clearly a daily practice you’ve kept up for many years!>>

I see that I left an important image out of the collages: a beagle! I did have one in the first attempt, the one I abandoned. I’ll just have to try again another day and put Charlie’s picture in it.

Oh, wait! I have some beagle pictures so…

Mosaic Monday

Open for Spring

Winchester, VA

The gardens of Glen Burnie have reopened for the season.

The walk down to the water garden is far enough that I took a cane with me. I’m still having mobility problems, so I was glad to have it for the walk back up the hill. 

Virginia bluebells and spring bulbs were blooming around the pond. 

Entertainment

Well, I missed City Daily Photo’s Theme Day. It’s always the first of the month, and I forgot to post a picture for it. I suppose I could say that birdwatching was a form of entertainment, but the bird pictures I posted were taken automatically so that would be a stretch.

My entertainment these days is pretty subdued. I read things on the Internet, and I go for rides and explore places. That’s pretty much it.

I used to go to shows, though. We went to some Broadway shows when I was a child, because my aunt was a singer in some of them. As an adult, there were long stretches when my budget did not allow for shows. Much later, there was a year when I went to many popular concerts, probably because I had access to quite a few free tickets. I worked for a company that had a number of season tickets to Wolf Trap Center and the Nissan Pavilion (later unglamorously named the Jiffy Lube Center, after its sponsor). 

A few years ago, I came across my collection of those tickets and grouped them together to take photos before I threw them out. 

Some of these shows were great! There’s a few that I don’t remember. 

Black and White and Red All Over

There's an old riddle that only worked if you said it out loud: "What's black and white and read all over?"

"A newspaper!"

Well, I guess that’s not true anymore. Newspapers aren’t read like they used to be. People are getting  news from the Internet, TV, or radio. I rarely pick up a newspaper anymore, with the exception of a monthly paper called the Mountain Courier which covers events in the northern Shenandoah Valley. 

I’m thinking of newspapers today because The Washington Post just laid off a huge number of employees. I stopped subscribing to it quite a while back, before the 2024 election. The owner has made a series of poor decisions, in my opinion. 

Anyway, I’m sharing a black-and-white picture and a color photo that’s predominantly red. Both of these are from Harrisonburg.

The Funkhouser Women’s Center has a view of a small pond with Massanutten Mountain in the distance. I had a bone density scan. It showed I have osteopenia, which I already knew. I’m glad it has not progressed to osteoporosis.

The red walls are in a fast food place. I don’t eat there, but they have decent restrooms and inexpensive expensive soft drinks. This one had tables so shiny you could see a reflection.

Bird Post #1280

According to Blogger Stats, this is Post #1,280 that is labeled "Birds." I have 9,350 posts total. I keep an eye on those statistics because they amaze me, or maybe they appall me. Have I really been doing this that long? Well yes, I started in 2005. 

Virginia is now seeing winter weather. Mornings have been well below freezing, and snow is predicted for this weekend, possibly 20 inches. Then again, the storm could go to the north and miss us again. In the meantime, here’s take a look at the birds that have been visiting my feeders this week. These are motion-activated pictures from the Birdfy camera.

We’ll start with the cardinal. The male is brilliant red. The female is subtle olive with touches of red.
 

The male house finch has some red feathers too. 

The slate-colored junco is gray and white but a charming bird. It’s also called a dark-eyed junco. This one appears to be starting to land. 

And just for fun, here’s a junco coming in from the other side.