{"id":21782,"date":"2018-02-28T01:24:21","date_gmt":"2018-02-28T06:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=21782"},"modified":"2018-02-28T01:24:21","modified_gmt":"2018-02-28T06:24:21","slug":"deadlines-met-and-missed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2018\/02\/deadlines-met-and-missed\/","title":{"rendered":"Deadlines met and missed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/CoralAbstract.jpg\" alt=\"coral growth on an old snail shell\" width=\"400\" height=\"600\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-21783\" \/>To see February on its poorly-spelled way, we have a shot from the dead season earlier in the month when virtually nothing existed to photograph, and I pulled out this little find from the Wilmington trip last year. Wandering the beach, I had found a snail shell, weathered heavily by tidal action and boring worms, that had served as an anchor for a small coral colony, and recently came across it again when sorting odds and ends. It&#8217;s faintly curious because the coral out-masses the shell by at least 2 to 1, probably more, and makes it distinctly off-balance, but coral attaches to fixed surfaces. As you can see, the coral is opposite the shell opening, covering every smooth surface, so I surmise that the shell itself was attached to something on the side you see here<strong>;<\/strong> part of the shell edge that continues out of the frame to the right seems to have an unweathered, freshly broken appearance, so I suspect that&#8217;s where it all had been anchored at one time.<\/p>\n<p>And as I was about to start on this post, I glanced at the sidebar where posts from years back on this date can be found, and noticed none at all for last year &#8211; which means I missed the end-of-month abstract for February in 2017. A wave of utter dread came over me, as well as firm denial<strong>:<\/strong> there&#8217;s <em>no way<\/em> that I could have disappointed my copious readers in that manner. And yet, it remains true<strong>;<\/strong> I missed the month end abstract a year ago. There must have been some extenuating circumstance then, some loss of internet service or thing of that nature, because not only is my post missing, <em>I have no missives about this lack from my readers either!<\/em> I&#8217;m sure your mind is boggling at this very idea as much as mine is. So to all of those who attempted to alert me to this apparent oversight, I apologize profusely, but your efforts never made it through the mysterious barrier to communication that existed then.<\/p>\n<p>Better late than never, as the saying goes, which I believe was originally a reference to menstruation. I herewith rectify this egregious lack, and provide a month-end abstract for February 2017, indeed actually taken within that month &#8211; I strive for authenticity. This is a crop from a larger frame to enhance the abstractedness of the subject, and somehow spellcheck did not even blink on that word. I mean, it actually underlined &#8220;pre-existing&#8221; [again], and who hasn&#8217;t heard of that?<br clear=\"all\"\/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/AYearLate.jpg\" alt=\"February 2017&#039;s abstract\" width=\"750\" height=\"558\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-21786\" \/><br clear=\"all\"\/>I&#8217;m often unsure how obvious, or not, any given photo is, but I suspect this one is helped a little by the reflection of the clouds. Anyway, it&#8217;s an old pine limb extending from the water, doing its best impression of an angelfish, though perhaps one with a lot of tumors on its side. Being in deep shade the limbs came out silhouetted against the sunny sky reflection. Yeah, I&#8217;ve done better, but remember<strong>:<\/strong> <em>February<\/em>. Easily the least productive month for me, at least until I move to the southern hemisphere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To see February on its poorly-spelled way, we have a shot from the dead season earlier in the month when virtually nothing existed to photograph, and I pulled out this little find from the Wilmington trip last year. Wandering the beach, I had found a snail shell, weathered heavily by tidal action and boring worms, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1903,4,3,12],"tags":[4307,4306,363,4305,3685],"class_list":["post-21782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-because","category-nature","category-photo","category-random","tag-branches","tag-coral","tag-feeble-excuses","tag-shells","tag-snail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21782","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=21782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21782\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}