“The deep roots never doubt spring will come.” ― Marty Rubin
Spring is a beautiful time of year I struggle to enjoy while being either heavily medicated or experiencing severe red swollen itchy eyes and a runny nose…or if I’m really lucky, both at once. It’s a time when our “Space Grey” car has a near constant distinct greenish yellow tint and all attempts to wash it results in being clean for a period of minutes rather than days. I’ve never doubted spring will come but sometimes when it does arrive I’ve wondered why I was so looking forward to it.
In last years post, you can find <here>, I mentioned a WordPress Plugin I was using called “Blackhole” which used a uniquely simple method to capture Internet bad robots that could collect website information and possibly consume considerable hosting resources. As an update, in the 9 months since that post, this plugin has identified and automatically blocked 29 robots who visited Meandering Passage read the “robot.txt” file but chose to ignore the deny commands. This prevented over 2500 visits (some kept trying to come back) and scans by these “bad” robots.
This past winter as time and my own compulsions allowed I’ve worked through my photo archives and to put together a few of my unofficial projects in their own photo galleries. These are photos of certain related things over the years that I’ve repeatedly photographed. You can find these “project galleries” <here>… if you’d care to take a look. I’ve still got a few years of archived photos to work through so I’m sure there will be further archived additions as well as hopefully future contributions.
Dear Spring, to show there are no hard feelings I’ve included a peace offering below, a photo of pink Dogwood blooms. Peace! Now excuse me, I can feel it’s time to take my next dose of allergy meds.
Ugh, I feel for you on the allergies. I don’t get the runny nose as much as I do just sinus pressure and resulting headaches. Hard to find the right drug cocktail to treat them that doesn’t make you feel worse with brain fog.
Good to hear on that plugin. I may check it out myself. I still get spikes now and then, and I’m sure it is not human traffic. I’ll check out the galleries when I am at my computer. I hate browsing photo galleries on my phone.
Yeah, even the non-drowsy allergy meds leave me feeling weird in one way or the other. The month of April has usually been the worst for me but with climate changes that may be extended from March to May. :-(
The plugin is mostly set and forget. It notifies you when it catches a bot which violates the initial parameters you set and it offers the ability to whitelist any bot you don’t want to ban. I ended up spending a few $ to upgrade the Pro version for a few extra features.
Side question: Have you had issues with the NextGEN Gallery Plugin disabling/interfering with WordPress XMLRPC.php?
Ah choo! That has been it for me this year.
Gesundheit! What’s the peak period for pollen and allergens where you are in Colorado, Monte! Just curious if it’s a little later then here.
Hay fever is a nasty affliction to suffer from. My wife and daughter both get it though I am not sure if pollen gets quite so bad here.
Nice little galleries you have started Earl. I like your Red Umbrella set. I knew someone who’s partner always took a red umbrella (or red parasol for sunny days) to create such shots on demand. Against the green English and Welsh countryside, it always looked perfect, which, of course, made them my preferred hiking partners :)
Looking forward to seeing more galleries. In the meantime, keep taking those antihistamines.
Thanks, Cedric! Those few red umbrella shots I’ve made are unstaged. I don’t see a problem with staging them if that’s what you’re after but at this point, I’ll just enjoy the hunt and keep my eyes open for them “in the wild.” 🙂
Yeah, I’ve had hay fever since childhood. Growing up and helping my dad and our neighbors put up hay during the spring and summer would end in the evenings with my eyes almost swollen shut. But these days we have much better drugs and my exposure is limited so it’s not as bad.
With climate changes, they’re predicting pollen season will be longer and more severe in years to come. Yippee!
p.s. I tried to visit your blog the other day and the posts didn’t come up. Don’t know if it’s something with my browser or is your site.