Dandelion Seed Head

I read two great articles in the G2 section of today's Guardian. The first article was entitled "One street down - just 39,136 to go". It's about something called the 'every single street challenge' - it questions if you can really know a city or a town unless you've visited every inch of it.
The article's writer, Amy Fleming, feels that there is no better way to soothe the soul - and get to know a town or city - than striding through its streets. In her 20's, heartbroken after being dumped, all she felt she could do was march with the tide of London's rush hour until the city grew quiet and dark and she was too exhausted to feel in shock about the end of her relationship anymore. Later, and a little lost in her early 30's, she spent six weeks cat sitting in New York compulsively plodding around Brooklyn and Manhattan listening to music. She found it strange and lonely but that 'moving through an endless montage of concentrated history and humanity felt beautiful and instructive"
The article suggests that the pandemic has sharpened a collective appreciation of our town and cities with fresh eyes and instead of shunning streets that we would have been ignored in pre-lockdown days in the rush to get from A to B some people are becoming more adventurous and deciding to walk or run all of the thousands of streets that make up their warts-and-all towns and cities. 
Some of these urban adventurers have found that they have discovered hidden gems such as community gardens and street art or places that people have found a way to make their own sweet little nooks and comfy places.
It can be a way to explore and learn about the history of a town or city rather than just an athletic challenge. One example given was a secondary school teacher in Glasgow, Michael Shanks, who lived in a block of flats with no garden and during lockdown felt he should do something more productive than just running around the same park so he decided to try and run around all the 6,000 streets of Glasgow and then write a blog and take photographs of whatever caught his eye.
I can't quite claim to have done the same thing in my own home town but I have on many occasions just walked through the streets trying to get images of what has caught my attention - the results of which have mostly appeared on blip!
The second article was about a photographer called Yelena Yemchuk  who spent five years photographing the youth of Odesa in Ukraine (on several visits between 2014 and 2019), capturing their irrepressible spirit at a time of protests and attacks and how this later became a chronicle of the slide into war.
The photobook that resulted shows intimate portraits, atmospheric interiors and snatched moments of a youthful freedom that may tragically prove to be short lived. She found that the kids, whilst absorbing western youth culture, had a lack of self-consciousness and a sense of openness that was immediately apparent in how they freely expressed themselves. She does not know what has happened to them in the intervening years but there is a 90% chance that they are now fighting in the war.  She said that although in some ways the last thing she wanted was for the book to come out now, it is important to "put a human face on a place that is constantly being portrayed as war-torn" and hopes that her images "show a city that is so far away and so different, but so recognisable too".
She wanted people to realise that "these are young people and this is their country and their lives. It is important to see that, to know what may  be lost".

Today's image is another back garden shot - this time of a dandelion seed head sitting amongst the wreckage of one of our old garden chairs.