Indian Summer

 Above, along the Indian Mount Trail at, roughly, Gladstone Boulevard and Hardesty Avenue. Below,            
                                                      Trails' namesake, Indian Mound.

Full Moon, Indian Mound

Merry Christmas

More Christmas In Northeast Volume II

 Pendleton Heights

 Silent Night

 Pendleton Heights Queen Anne

 Scarritt Renaissance Arts and Crafts

 Scarritt Renaissance

Indian Mound

Fall In Historic Northeast

Originally the campus of National College, then St. Paul's School of Theology, and now The Guadalupe Center.

 Indian Mound

 Kessler Park above and two below.

 KC Museum above, The Colonnade below.

Cliff Drive

Infrared

Experimented with infrared photography today.  Read online where the Nikon D800 was not usable for same, but then Roy Inman found an article online that said otherwise.  Otherwise is correct.  My IR filter is 67mm and I currently have no lenses of that diameter... so, had to hold the filter in front of my 50mm lens.   Works but not optimal.  I had forgotten how difficult IR can be.   Above, Indian Mound, below, the KC skyline from Kessler Park. 

Merry And Happy

Northeast Homes Tour - Come One Come All

 The newly formed Northeast Kansas City Historical Society has announced its first Homes Tour to be held this Fall on October 20th.   Seven homes in three neighborhoods will be open to the public.   I'll have ticket prices and how to order as we get closer.  In the meantime you may check in at their new website for updates.  http://www.nekchs.com/

 The seven homes comprise a variety of architectural styles that are the hallmark of Historic Northeast.   The featured neighborhoods are Indian Mound, Scarritt Renaissance, and Pendleton Heights.   The homes were built from the 1880s to the 1940s with all but one well over 100 years old.

 For now consider this just a tease.   I'll have more in depth on each of these houses as the tour date approaches.

 All shots taken with the Nikon D800..  Seven shots each combined into one to obtain high dynamic range.   ISO 400, F9-11, with the Nikon 14-24mm lens.  Shot at different times of the day to provide the best light.  I used the full 36 megs of the D800 by centering the house up close to minimize lens distortion and then corrected any distortion in Adobe Camera Raw...

Before Van Brunt Boulevard, A Dairy Farm

These two pictures were taken ca. 1899 and were titled "East Boulevard." They show the proposed site of the newest road to be constructed in Kansas City. At the time these were taken the land was a dairy farm. Cows are visible in both shots and, in the shot above, a barn is barely visible behind the trees in the upper right. Not sure at all of directions in these shots, but, if the lay of the land is any indication, the land slopping up would probably be toward the north. East Boulevard was later renamed "Van Brunt Boulevard." My personal guess is that this is north of St. John and that the ridge in the bottom photo is where Gladstone Boulevard eventually was constructed. There was a large pond where Elmwood Avenue and Windsor intersect that was used for watering the cattle.

Prescription Only

I have come to believe that hammers and saws, not unlike sudafed, should be prescription only. You would have to have one from an architect and one from an historian.

Clouds

Wednesday the wind and clouds combined to create myriad shapes in the sky.... and quickly.

Above, Indian Mound in silhouette and below in contrast to the gray sky.

The rest of these images were taken from the top of the Mound above looking North and below looking up....All were taken with the Nikon D3.... multiple exposures at the same time and then I selected three or four or nine... to merge into one HDR image. 24-70 zoom used for all.

What is interesting to me is that the above shot looks remarkably like those looking down from the space shuttle over the oceans...

Honeysuckle Be Gone

Saturday stalwart residents of Northeast, Pendleton Heights, Scarritt Renaissance and Indian Mound helps clear bush honeysuckle from an area just west of the Colonnade on the Concourse.

We worked in partnership with KC Parks and Recreation which furnished men, chainsaws and a wood chipper... the difference is remarkable....


Above and below show the area before we attacked.

Above Mike and Olga raking and piling.

All ages were involved in the clearing and cleanup.
Above, Leslie getting some exercise.
As usual over here much of the work was done on hillsides....


Above, Adam Schieber rakes.... after the scrub trees and honeysuckle was cut the stumps were painted with herbicide. After a couple of weeks Parks and Rec will come back in and cut the stumps at ground level. Thus this area can then be regularly mowed to prevent re-occurence.
Mike, foreground and Jeff in the background.... we hauled the branches up the hill and Parks chipped them.... two truck loads came from this relatively small area.
Above, Jason multi-tasking... he is the Neighborhood Beautification Czar for Scarritt Renaissance.

Leslie in the background (blogged her home in a recent post) raking so the stumps are visible.
Our crew started at 9am and Adam broke out the grille at noon. The rain started just as we began eating.
Above, Andrea, community organizer for the new HELP organization and Don Bosco....

Kade and Kerry above in Dad's truck.
Malenda... assistant beautification czarina and person in charge of our bicycle rack art project. More on that in a future blog.
What a difference a day makes.... Parks and Rec furnishes the tools, the neighborhood furnishes gloves and trashbags.



Hard work but well worth it. It's good to partner with the City in these projects.