Yes, it’s been over a month since my last new post. And no, I have not abandoned Wild Trumpet Vine.

Some readers may notice that the blog has a somewhat different appearance and format these days.  This is due to unfortunate and unforeseen circumstances, and it’s too soon to discuss them yet.  Wild Trumpet Vine has required rebuilding, or perhaps I should say replanting.  Some re-tilling and rejuvenating of the soil has also  been necessary. It’s sort of like a band of crazy squirrels has gone wild in the garden.  They didn’t destroy all my precious plants, but they uprooted many and rearranged them all.

Wild Trumpet Vine, of course, is known for its tenacity.  It’s hard to dig up, and once removed, it has a tendency to return.  I’m confident that it will be back in full, better and stronger than ever.  One by one, I’m reformatting and reinstalling archived posts.  There’s no simple way to restore all the old posts and their accompanying photos.  It requires tedious cutting and pasting.  Most of the entries, from September 2011 on, have reappeared, but some gaps still remain.  I haven’t quite got the hang of managing my new domain. There is the occasional post that reads like a single, never-ending paragraph. It’s still a mystery why some spaces between text lines “take” and others do not.

If you’ve commented since mid-July, I’m not ignoring you.  In its new format, the blog quickly attracted a couple thousand spam comments.  Nearly all these hawk cheap designer knock-offs and cut-rate hair care products, two topics with which Wild Trumpet Vine is most definitely not concerned.  I’ve still got quite a few such posts to work through, in order not to miss those of real value. To stop the constant stream of spam, my husband  installed a captcha feature.  Now, in order to comment,  you must first prove you’re a real person by answering a simple math question.  We opted against the squiggly, melted word captcha because I find them tricky to decipher.   Archived comments will begin appearing once I get all the old posts restored.  I’m lucky that H knows a thing or two about coding.  Without his help, WTV may have been a goner, and I would be in mourning.

If you subscribed to the blog in its previous incarnation, you’ll have to re-subscribe, I’m sorry to say.  A “subscribe to” feature will be installed soon.   I hope to see the return of all my loyal readers before long.

In the midst of all this re-digging and re-planting, new posts are on hold for a while longer.   Because I’d already fallen behind, I find this very frustrating.  Our spring break trip to Europe, so unusual for our family, dug up many memories and inspired numerous posts.  The end of school, and all the weeks of summer, save one, have now slipped by, absolutely without mention.  But I’ll get the vines transplanted, and they’ll flourish again.  Don’t abandon Wild Trumpet Vine.  I won’t!

Thanks for your patience, and thanks for reading!