Life slowed down a little bit more for me today, as I am starting to settle into a routine again. So there was a late breakfast, with time spent reading the comics and doing the crossword. Then there was time spent just goofing off reading some of my book. I did also manage to finally get in touch with a County Park down in Florida that I was planning to stay in when I go back in January. The park is over near the town of Daytona where the 'Orange Blossom Ball' contra dance weekend is going to be held this year. It will be a different location from the first two years it was put on, but that may be a good thing I think. Anyway; I finally got a hold of the park people there in the park and reserved a spot in the campground for a week. 
   I did actually get outside later today after lunch. It was such a nice sunny day to be out and about. A little bit on the cool side, but really quite nice for the chore I set for myself to do. Today it was time to grab the loppers, limb saw and clippers and go out to do battle with the brush that had grown up along one of the fence lines out near the main road. Not only had it grown up, but in the 20+ years since the last work was done, several trees have managed to ingest whole parts of the fence. Today I clipped and lopped  and tore at brush and wild rose bushes and hunks of old poison ivy vines. What a mess. Not only was it a tangled up snarl but it was all held together with these rose bush canes from hell. Every time you got anywhere near one it would jump out and attack you with these thorns that any Rhino in the world would be proud to use as its horn. The canes on some of these things were bigger around than my wrists, while the smaller ones where only the diameter of my thumb. But the big thing is they climb up into the tree branches and droop over onto everything. Like snakes they would lay in wait until you walked under them and then attack.
    Of course it actually gets worse because some of the trees these vines were climbing over were Black Locust which come with its own brand of thorns. But these can be 3-4 inches long and as sharp as hypodermic needles. I managed to clear about 600 square feet of the stuff this afternoon. Enough that it should be okay to get in there now with the chainsaw and grub the rest of the trees and brush out of there. Once that is done I can run the mower over the whole area and then get ready to rebuild that whole section of fence later next spring. Oh....  the reason to do all this grubbing now... I found out last year that if you wait until everything leafs out, you won't even be able to get close enough to actually start clipping stuff, since it will be way to thick by then.
    So I spent several hours doing that, finally quitting while there was just enough light left to put the tools away and then feed the horses. I found the cable for my camera finally and got some pictures from last month down loaded. Several of them are posted below. They are of  the cable cars in San Francisco which I saw when I travelled there from Sacramento for a day trip. I drove down to Walnut Creek and hopped on 'BART', their rapid transit system, and rode into Powell Street Station. Then I walked around for a couple of hours before meeting up with my niece and a couple of her friends for dinner. It was a lot of fun actually.

Cable Cars after dinner in San Francisco with my niece

 Dec 23, 2014

Leaving dinner with my niece and two of her friends, the sun was starting to go down and the Christmas lights were coming on. I liked how the light was making everything glow.
Cable Car Photo #1

 

Cable Car Photo #2

Cable Car Photo #3

brk*