This house is my house, this house is my house...

The Trilogy resort is now offering duplexes. This is the first model duplex. Notice that the powers that be feel strongly a home is not a home without a dog. So they've provided one, along with a dog house. The nice thing is that this dog does not eat, or poop, or smell, or bark and never needs walking.

Mount Dora Side Street

Mount Dora is a small artistic town set in the rolling hills of central Florida. It is quite beautiful and noted for its arts and crafts shows. This photo shows a side street filled with small shops which are, in turn, filled with goodies for you to purchase and take home.

Cutting a Retention Pond

The earth of the north central part of Florida is made up of limestone and sand and zillions of fish parts. That conglomeration works pretty well until we get a lot of rain. If it rains too much, the water is absorbed into the earth and washes away the sand and things begin to tumble in and around each other which often leads to sinkholes which in more extreme cases can swallow houses whole.

One way developers try to avoid such sinkholes is to provide indentations in the earth known as retention ponds - a place into which excess water can drain and thus take pressure off the sinkhole-causing forces. Most of the time these retention ponds are dry. So they need to be cut. This photo shows a young lady cutting a rather large retention pond.

Lately, however, we've had an enormous (for us) amount of rain, and this retention pond along with other retention ponds here at Trilogy have been filled with water. They are now in process of draining and things are returning to normal.

Taxi Reflected

Horse Farm Beauties

These two thoroughbreds live on a large horse farm just across the street from our front door. We are fortunate in that we can sit in our front porch area, virtually invisible in the shadows, and watch the horses as they graze, doze, and run around chasing each other.

We have one huge concern, though. The City of Ocala is built, for the most part, on land that used to be horse farms. More and more horse farms are being sold and turned into residential subdivisions. Trilogy, a 55+ community in which we live, was not too long ago, a horse farm.

We're hoping against hope, that our horse farm remains a horse farm for the next 10-15 years.

Golf Cart Crossing

The Spanish Springs section of The Villages is divided by a large, 2-lane highway, known as Highway 441. It is an extremely busy road and would be impossible to cross without stop lights or similar devices.  Thus, the planners constructed a large bridge to allow golf carts (the main mode of transportation in The Villages) to cross Highway 441 in relatively safety.

You would not, however, want to have had "one too many" drinks and then try to guide your golf cart up and over this bridge.  Notice the tire marks?  Evidently, there were a number accidents that "almost" happened, as is also suggested by the lean of the red cart in this picture.

One thing I've observed in my trips to The Villages is that the old folks living there drive golf carts at top speed.  The streets compare to the Daytona 500.  I've watched them come screaming down this bridge, hanging on with both hands, hair blowing, all caution thrown to the wind.

It's scary!

Water Tank - Downtown Ocala

Father & Son

Community Center, Spanish Springs, The Villages

Spanish Springs Lake - The Villages, Florida

The Forest Green in Infrared

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays

This is one of the Christmas trees adorning the Oak House at the Trilogy Resort.

All I Want For Xmas is this Xmas car(d) ...

Christmas in Spanish Springs, The Villages

Wells Fargo Bank

Wells Fargo, one of our country's more disreputable banking institutions, has a large presence in Ocala. This photo pictures one of the the Wells Fargo branches on Ocala's east side.

Initially, I took the photo because of the colors and the contrast between the commercial (bank) and Mother Nature (trees).  But then I realized this is a rather poignant symbol of the Christmas season.  The banks at this time of year are packed with holiday shoppers pulling money out of their accounts or applying for loans to obtain additional money with which to buy Christmas gifts with which to litter their living rooms on Christmas morning.

Scrooge, the bad guy of Christmas, has a point, I think.