}

Monday, February 22, 2016

A photo challenge

Aside from memes, social media is also awash in challenges of one sort or another. Some are serious, and maybe even useful (like some sort of fitness challenge), others are just for fun. I’m taking part in one of the "just for fun" ones.

A friend “nominated” me on Facebook to do a photo challenge in which the object is to post one nature-related photo every day for seven days. To make it more interesting and challenging for me, I decided to limit it to only photos I take with my phone, and also only things around my house. The first part is easy, the second, maybe not as much.

I post the photos on my Instagram, and from there the photos are shared to my personal Facebook and to my Flickr photostream. However, I thought I’d go one step further and share the photos here, too, and tell the story behind them—similar to what I do with my YouTube videos.

I took the photo up top yesterday. I called it “Persistence” because it depicts weeds pushing up through the boards in our deck (which itself has been in two of my YouTube videos so far). I have no idea what it is, exactly, but it doesn’t really matter: A weed is any plant growing where it’s not wanted. “A rose is a weed in a tomato patch,” my mother often said, sometimes changing the flower or vegetable.

This particular weed, whatever it is, is itself a persistent thing, and is always popping up. It’s difficult to pull out even when it’s accessible (the leaves strip off, while the stem and roots resist being pulled out), but when it grows up between the deck boards like this, as it does every year somewhere in the decked area, it’s especially frustrating.

Weedkiller would work, but I don’t use that where the furbabies hang around. So, I pull out what I can, then pour boiling water on what's left. That usually works if the plant is small, but if it isn’t, it just sends up a new stem. Like I said: It’s persistent.

Still, I’ll eventually get the thing, one way or another, and this photo will be the only record that it was ever there. Which is kind of the whole point of photos, and challenges like this one, after all.

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