{"id":14784,"date":"2014-06-04T23:26:07","date_gmt":"2014-06-05T03:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=14784"},"modified":"2014-06-04T23:26:07","modified_gmt":"2014-06-05T03:26:07","slug":"blogging-wasnt-in-the-cards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2014\/06\/blogging-wasnt-in-the-cards\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogging wasn’t in the cards"},"content":{"rendered":"

For anyone, should they actually exist, who has been stopping by and not finding any new posts, I apologize. On occasion, circumstances inhibit sitting down and working on posts, and this particular occasion was a move. We are now in a new house!<\/p>\n

I take no credit for this whatsoever;<\/strong> it was all The Girlfriend’s accomplishment. Well, okay, that sounds like I didn’t even help with the move, which isn’t true at all, but what I mean by that is, it’s her house, and her finances that permitted it. She is quite pleased with it, and rightfully so. It’s in a considerably nicer neighborhood, not terribly far from the old place (which made moving a little easier,) but a lot more convenient to her work, and various useful shops. We will not be missing the old place, or the obnoxious neighbors, in any way at all.<\/p>\n

And that goes for my own pursuits as well. I had actually planned to bring along a few of the mantises that had hatched back there, but found that a Japanese maple tree at the new place already plays host to a large number of Chinese mantises (got the Asian thing going on,) and I didn’t feel the need to introduce competition. The butterfly bush<\/a> came along for transplant, along with the salvia plant and my almond tree, but the rosemary bush had grown too large to move, so we’ll have to start a new one here (and yes, we did get lots of cuttings to do this.)<\/p>\n

\"Chinese
I was watching the almond tree with trepidation for the past few weeks, since the local white-tailed deer had a tendency to let it get fully leafed out before stripping more than half of the leaves away early in the morning;<\/strong> this is how they feed, browsing for tasty leaves or shoots but not killing off the provider, and then leaving it alone for a few weeks to replenish their food source before returning. My little tree, which had sprouted spontaneously from a discarded almond in the compost bin a few years back, had produced its first leaves in the spring and then been stripped several weeks ago. It had reproduced its foliage, and was due for a return visit;<\/strong> I figured it would get nailed right before the move, but the deer waited too long and I was able to transplant it intact.<\/p>\n

The cats, it must be said, did not handle the move with feline grace;<\/strong> the more appropriate term is, “freaked out.” For a couple of days, they slunk around the new place like feral strays, jumping at every sound, and spending a lot of time deep in a closet. Eventually, they determined they were not intruding on someone else’s territory and could claim this as their own, and soon discovered the delight of stairs and a balcony overlooking the living room. A few days later when they were mellow, they were permitted to explore the screened-in back porch, which was all kinds of okay to them.<\/p>\n

\"Little
I, myself, am still recovering – my hands, feet, legs, and back took a beating, and of course I’m doing the typical post-move endeavor of trying to find where I packed this or that crucial thing. It doesn’t matter how organized you try to be, I think – Chaos<\/a> will take over and make you dance to his discordant tune. I suspect I will get back into posting slowly, so for now I’ll just close with a small crab spider, genus Mecaphesa<\/em>, that I shot during the final stages of packing. She measures 6mm across the tucked legs, so, not exactly an imposing specimen unless you’re tiny (or extremely<\/em> arachnophobic.) I have spotted several interesting arthropods in the immediate vicinity, but so far have only taken the time to photograph the mantis above – I’ll try to amend that soon.<\/p>\n

\"Mecaphesa
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For anyone, should they actually exist, who has been stopping by and not finding any new posts, I apologize. On occasion, circumstances inhibit sitting down and working on posts, and this particular occasion was a move. We are now in a new house! I take no credit for this whatsoever; it was all The Girlfriend’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3,12],"tags":[1262,1370,1585,2430,2431,591],"class_list":["post-14784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","category-random","tag-chinese-mantis","tag-crab-spider","tag-mecaphesa","tag-moving","tag-new-house","tag-tenodera-aridifolia-sinensis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}