Rosebay - three years on

On this date in 2010, I posted this blip of rosebay willowherb photographed on a walk down Deepdale in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Three years on, here is a stand of it growing half a mile from our house in Arnside, with the mist shrouded woods behind.

Had I not missed a single blip along the way, I think this would be blip number 1097 and my three year blip anniversary would have been on Tuesday 16 July. Blipfoto's approach to celebrating blip year anniversaries is quirky: it assumes a full year of no blanks, makes no allowance for Leap Years, and unlike a birthday is celebrated the day before the date of first blip. If we celebrated birthdays like that, I would have had my first birthday on 31st May instead of 1 June, my second birthday on 30 May (because of a Leap Year), and because of all the Leap Years since, my next birthday would be much earlier in May (I could be more precise if I wasn't too hot to tax my poor brain to work it out). A bit perverse really.

Anyway, so this my 950th blip is posted on my third blip day. It seemed appropriate to blip another shot of Rosebay or Fireweed as it was known after WWII because of its appearance on bomb sites. It is a plant whose flowers mark the passage of Spring into Summer, flowering now when all the Spring plants have gone to seed. It is the food plant of the caterpillars of the two spectacular elephant hawkmoth species.

I never imagined when I posted that first blip three years ago that I would still be here three years later. I only posted it out of idle curiosity, I didn't think about my journal title or my sign in name - or else I might have chosen something a bit more imaginative. I had one comment that day from someone I have had no contact with since. 4 subscribers have subsequently added comments to that blip. But when you look at it, what is there to say? A dull photograph with no text to explain it. I had no idea about receiving or giving comments. Some kind soul gave me five stars, but I would not have noticed that at the time. It was a long time before I noticed the notifications tab, but then it was a long time before anyone gave me a heart. I first reached the Spotlight page with my 100th blip. It was a very slow and gradual start, I didn't know what an obsession it would turn into, or that I would within a couple of months invest in a DSLR and then start acquiring lenses. The gear has got a lot better, I think I have a better idea now of how to frame photos to make them a bit more interesting. I have got better at writing something that will give me clues when I look back in my dotage as to what I might have been doing the day a blip was taken.

That's enough verbiage, thank you to everyone who subscribes and comments - without you I would still be taking very dull photographs that would send my brother-in-law to sleep within 2 minutes of a 'lantern slide' show.