Love the pajamas

Love the pajamas
Originally uploaded by kc0lex (Matthew)

Well, I thought my wife handed me a shirt and pants. So, I put the pants on and then realized it was a onesie and not a shirt. Well, the solution is simple, button the onesie on over the pant that you already have on.

Under the Mercy,

Matthew S

Riddle me this. . .

How many . . .
Originally uploaded by kc0lex (Matthew)

How many older children does it take to carry a carseat to the car?

Well, according to this picture the answer is four!

Some friends of ours came over for dinner and this was just too cute. Good thing the shutterbug was onscene to capture the moment.

Under the Mercy,

Matthew S

My 31st Birthday present

My 31st Birthday present
Originally uploaded by kc0lex (Matthew)

I love my wife. The little old 4 cup (remember a coffee cup is 5 oz) is now gone and I can make up to 12 cups at a time, it is very cool and brews well. THANK YOU DAWN.

Under the Mercy,

Matthew S

Garden: I am really tired

I am not tired from gardening but from working extra long and hard at work with a computer conversion we are doing. I do have two cool pictures that I took showing how the outdoors is looking around here. Mary helped by picking up the roots, rocks and pieces of clay pipe that the rototiller found underground. Lucia on the other hand is playing and making herself "dizzy".


The other really neat thing we are wanting to do, most of it next year, that I have set a little bit up is having lots of pretty birds outside our kitchen window. Well, we had our first documented visitor.


Under the Mercy,

Matthew S

How I hope our garden grows!

Well, we have decided to make the plunge and have a vegetable garden this year. This isn't just a simple planting of plants. My wife and I haven't ever had a veggie garden together and we don't have a plot for it in our backyard. So, basically I am working with the grass (and weeds, let us just say that the weed and feed didn't work the best this year). Not a terribly bad proposition, just break through some sod, cultivate the earth and circles and plant some plants. Well, it is going to take a bit more work than that. We have a decent amount of clay in the ground so we will probably have to work in some soil amendments (translate as rotted cow poop/manure)into the ground as well.

However, thanks to my lovely wife we have a solid plan for what is going into the garden and basic layout from my wife and my experience working in heavy construction to stake and work the ground. After laying out the basic idea the foreman and her inspector came out to check what the project was going to look like and I received their approval to go ahead with construction. Originally, we planned on having the garden as an island surrounded by lawn but after discussions with a consultant (translate as my dad) we decided to expand the garden to both fences (translate as cutting down on grass to mow).

Now, time to bring the heavy equipment in for work. What we have here is a Honda front tined rototiller. The basic idea is to use the machinery to do the hard work of cutting into the ground through the grass, loosen and aerate the soil to make it so we can work it. This step also gives me a good idea of what type (or as it turned out type*S*) of soil to work with. So, off I go, fighting the tiller into the ground as it bucks and fights and just wants to walk across the top of the soil. After finally fighting it down into the ground and making slow headway as it wants to jump out of the ground every time it starts to move forward, hits a concrete chunk, root or piece of clay pipeline laying several inches under the ground. Okay, well, I can handle debris but it is slowing things down.

After taking a small break (yes, cereal malt beverage) I came back to the garden and found a small surprise. I believe, if identified correctly, this is a deceased green snake. It appears that I either nicked it with the rototiller or one of the neighborhood birds pecked at it and it was left here for me to find. It was returned to the garden to be picked up by a bird or to be combined down into the soil. The other thing you can see in this shot is how beat up my hands were getting even though I had adopted wearing some leather palmed riding gloves. I was getting the soil turned, it was just turning out to be very tough gardening.

This also shows you the 3 passes that I was able to make for the day before dark rolled around. I didn't start at sunrise but I worked until sunset. That was the majority of the work I did on Saturday. Sunday morning we went to Church and had lunch and then I was off to my brother's house to get the missing piece of the rototiller (the depth gauge!!!!). This wonderful little piece of metal was put into place and it pulled the rototiller down into the ground making pass after pass easier, no longer was the rototiller jumping out of the ground every time it hit something hard. It was also awesome that my brother came along to help for a little while cutting down on my time behind the rototiller I have affectionately named "Bouncy". At last the big moment came and all the soil had been turned.

Will all of this work done and so much more to go I can say that I am excited and still working hard on planning the next steps. I am going to try to work on a new graphic that will show this plot of ground (probably going to need a ladder) and I will overlay our plans for cultivation and plants. I can tell you we are planning on having some compost heaps, cucumbers, bell peppers, onions, watermelons, various herbs, onions, garlic and a sunflower house (will have to dedicate a post to this when we plant it) for our daughters and their friends to play in. The picture on the left shows some of the roots, clay pipe and chunks of concrete I pulled out and need to pick up. Going to work on getting some composted manure into the ground this week through the weekend. I also need to hand cultivate the front flower beds that have the bulbs coming up in them so that my wife can plant the pretty flowers she has planned in them.

Lastly, we will be staking out the individual beds for plants,laying out compost, placing a short border around this area, fencing this area off and putting plants into the ground. Oh, and I really need to break out the Weed-B-Gon and spray the lawn every 10 days for about a month to get these weeds under control and let the Bermuda perk up and pretty up.

My plan is to take pictures of the various activities we work on and things we plant. Then it will be a matter of keeping everyone posted on the things we do as we begin to harvest. We are starting to research several things about storing all of these things we grow. My dream is that we will be able to get to a point that we can grow enough to cut down our dependence on store bought vegetables so that we don't have to buy the ones that we grow for a large chunk of the year.

Under the Mercy,

Matthew S

Looking up

Looking up
Originally uploaded by kc0lex (Matthew)

I went down after work as they were testing the "Ring Of Fire" at the Keeper of the Plains. This was a striking view of the Keeper that I found. It is interesting that none of the water is in the picture as the Keeper sits on the convergence of the Big and Little Arkansas rivers.


Here is another view that has given me some more ideas and I am going to have to study astronomy a bit to make it happen.


Under the Mercy,

Matthew S

Mom's little helper

Mom's little helper
Originally uploaded by kc0lex (Matthew)

This was just too precious of a sight this evening. After a long day of moving furniture and doing things that were too big for her to really help with, Lucia found something just right after mom hoisted her on top of the stove and let her clean the microwave out.

She was so very proud of herself.

Under the Mercy,

Matthew S

So thankful for what I have.

Alseep on a bench in a park
Originally uploaded by kc0lex (Matthew)

I went walking in a local park that has fountains last night to see if they were on so I could look at the possibility of doing some nighttime photos at that location. I took the long way to walk in and was scared when I found a homeless man sleeping on a bench next to where I was standing. After making sure he was breathing and just asleep and not dead I had a hard decision to make. Do I wake him up and make sure he is alright (other than the obvious lack of shelter) or let him sleep? I imagine it is hard to find a place to sleep and hard to get asleep, especially when on a hard bench in 40-45 degree farenheit weather and you are sleeping under an area light in a public park. I was also scared of how he might react to me standing over him waking him up at 11:30 P.M. He also appeared to be hispanic and I didn't know if he even spoke english.

You can see everything he had with him, his Wal-Mart bag to the right of him has what is probably all of his earthly possessions (no alcohol, I might add). We do have shelters in the area but I don't know if they would accept him (lack of room or maybe he is banned). We do have a program underway here in Wichita and Sedgwick County to end chronic homelessness. I am going to have to ask them some questions and see if I can find some resources that I could offer if I see him next time I go down.

I stood out by the edge of the river for a few minutes and said some prayers for this man in the cold. I would have just felt too quilty to go home and say them as I slid under the covers of my warm bed. Maybe I should go to the thrift store and buy some extra blankets every fall to pass out since if I am going to do urban nighttime photography.

Under the Mercy,

Matthew S

Light Painting and other things photo.

This is a really fun photography technique and requires no photoshop, the effect is made as the picture is taken. You can click on the pictures to be taken to a larger version of it if you are having a hard time viewing it.

How many of my ghostly heads do you see?


I also appear to be really spooky. Don't you think?


I can also write a word or two. I only have 15 seconds on my current camera.

The rest of the pictures that I took tonight can be found in this set on flickr. Most of the others are ambient/low-light photos of water fountains and reflections in water. These adventures and experiments in photography help me understand the mechanics of photography better and help me take better pictures of my kids. It is also a great creative outlet for me.

Enjoy!

Under the Mercy,

Matthew S

Appreciating

I would like to just take this moment to say thank you. No, not to you the reader (you are important and I do thank you for reading) but to someone that is more important than any of you. Wait, she is a reader of this blog so I guess I am thanking a reader. Right now she is either shaking her head or giggling as she reads this (that would probably depend if the coffee has finished brewing and if any of the kids are up).

I love you, my beautiful camera shy photogenic wife, thank you for all you do.

Davy, my dearling, my Dawn
Lovingly under the Mercy,
Your Sheldon,
Your Husband,
Matthew S

p.s. to all of those onlookers if about 1/2 of the above 5 lines doesn't make sense, run out to the library or a bookstore and read "A Severe Mercy" by Sheldon Vanauken.