The same feeling happened on seeing this, I felt those applying afterwards has missed this chance of having their work acknowledged. Yet like in the other case, it didn't happen, OP kept the vibe on and real .
Yes, I will keep this topic open for a while and people can still apply here for a Merit by dropping quality posts and I will review it. 
So, it's still time until this round will be closed.
I think it is good that way, keeping track on when last when someone unmerited post was merited and counting it down to a month will be too much work load, running it by rounds of one month interval makes it easier.