{"id":1640,"date":"2011-11-05T07:16:08","date_gmt":"2011-11-05T12:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/2011\/11\/05\/bush-walk-then-and-now\/"},"modified":"2011-11-05T07:16:08","modified_gmt":"2011-11-05T12:16:08","slug":"bush-walk-then-and-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/2011\/11\/05\/bush-walk-then-and-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush Walk: Then and Now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Let me start by saying that I extremely jealous of those of you who are experiencing Autumn in Kentucky.&#160; It has always been my favorite time of year: The color in the leaves, the brisk fall weather, being bundled up around campfires, college football on TV.<\/p>\n<p>While it isn&#8217;t a typical October\/November for us, the seasons in Swaziland are certainly changing.&#160; About 2 months ago we took a walk through the bush behind our house.&#160; At the time, it was the tail end of Winter (our dry season).&#160; But now, the wet (hot) season is fast approaching.&#160; We have had several heavy rains, many 100+ degree days, the mangos are growing on the trees and everything is turning green.<\/p>\n<p>We took another walk through the bush today and even though I have been observant to the changes, I was amazed at how much things had changed.&#160; Take a look for yourself:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; border-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; border-right: 0px\" title=\"Bush Walk 057\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Bush Walk 057\" src=\"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/BushWalk057.jpg\" width=\"404\" height=\"271\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">Then\u2026<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; border-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; border-right: 0px\" title=\"Bush walk 2 004\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Bush walk 2 004\" src=\"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/Bushwalk2004.jpg\" width=\"404\" height=\"304\" \/> <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\u2026 now<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px\" title=\"Bush Walk 095\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Bush Walk 095\" src=\"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/BushWalk095.jpg\" width=\"404\" height=\"271\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">Then\u2026<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px\" title=\"Bush walk 2 028\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Bush walk 2 028\" src=\"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/Bushwalk20281.jpg\" width=\"304\" height=\"404\" \/> <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\u2026and now.<\/p>\n<p>Of course some things don&#8217;t change.&#160; I still have the most beautiful daughter and I wife that I enjoy every minute with.<\/p>\n<p>On this particular trip, we walked quite a bit further until we reached a nearby river.&#160; Beth mentioned last week on <a href=\"http:\/\/beth.kickert.info\">her blog<\/a> how much we love the cattle egrets that fly around here.&#160; Well today there were tons of them out.&#160; Here are a couple quick picture of some we saw:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px\" title=\"Bush walk 2 014\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Bush walk 2 014\" src=\"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/Bushwalk2014.jpg\" width=\"404\" height=\"288\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px\" title=\"Bush walk 2 016\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Bush walk 2 016\" src=\"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/Bushwalk2016.jpg\" width=\"404\" height=\"293\" \/>&#160;<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">We also saw some more &quot;interesting&quot; forms of life.&#160; Check out this video of a dung beetle:<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; width: 425px; padding-right: 0px; display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-top: 0px\" id=\"scid:5737277B-5D6D-4f48-ABFC-DD9C333F4C5D:50698b71-1afe-4050-bfcb-71d80481cba3\" class=\"wlWriterEditableSmartContent\">\n<div><object width=\"425\" height=\"355\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/hMGTkR0P-u8&amp;hl=en\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/hMGTkR0P-u8&amp;hl=en\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"425\" height=\"355\"><\/embed><\/object><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p align=\"left\">&#160;<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Unlike last time where Mikayla got tuckered out pretty quickly, she was a trooper the whole time on this trip.&#160; Here is a final picture of her leading us home:<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; border-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; border-right: 0px\" title=\"Bush walk 2 030\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Bush walk 2 030\" src=\"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/Bushwalk2030.jpg\" width=\"404\" height=\"304\" \/> <\/p>\n<p>She is tough and cute\u2026 and she knows it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let me start by saying that I extremely jealous of those of you who are experiencing Autumn in Kentucky.&#160; It has always been my favorite time of year: The color in the leaves, the brisk fall weather, being bundled up around campfires, college football on TV. While it isn&#8217;t a typical October\/November for us, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[665,696,92,698,697],"class_list":["post-1640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-swaziland","tag-bush","tag-dry-season","tag-mikayla","tag-seasons","tag-wet-season"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1640\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kickert.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}