Is this considered an exploit or not (Re: ephemeral node respawning)

I had e-mailed about this and had been asked to post about it in a bug reports section.

World name: Balmung
Character name: Valkrinos Windstar
Class/Level: Gathering class (specifically, I imagine, botanists and miners)
Party or solo: Solo
Area and coordinates: Various, specifically referring to some Heavensward areas though.
Steps:
1. Harvest at ephemeral node
2. Go to a gathering node nearby (that shows up in a pair) and opening the gathering menu and then closing it.
3. Going to another gathering node pair nearby (different from the first pair) and opening the gathering menu at one of those two nodes and then closing it.
4. Returning to a fresh ephemeral node.

Is this working as intended, that you can simply open the gathering menu at two spots in different areas and then return to a new ephemeral node? It feels like you'd at least have to use up two nodes, at least.

If this is an exploit, what would be deemed an acceptable way of respawning ephemeral nodes. Using up at least one node at each pair nearby? Using up both nodes at each pair before returning to the ephemeral node?

From what I've read (though may be wrong at parts), it seems like in ARR respawning stuff for gathering was similar, and apparently "favor nodes" are the outliers in that you need to use them up, or something, so, maybe this is working fine, but I was trying to make sure.