Happy 3rd birthday to PJ’s photo blogging challenge! I just read my post from three years ago and noticed a couple of things. For one thing, there are a few people who have posted every month for 36 months and counting. Congratulations! For another, I’m convinced my photographs are better now than they were three years ago. That makes me happy…and thankful for this challenge for encouraging me to practice photography on a regular basis..

There are many interesting phrases and quotations that include the word three. A few of my favourites:

• Three-ring circus (aka everyday life, IMHO);
• Good things come in threes (the very best thing in my life is my three guys…Mr. GeoK, C and K);
• In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on. ~ Robert Frost
• By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest. ~ Confucius

At the beginning of the month, I reflected on possible photographic interpretations for this month’s theme. As the days ticked by, I broke down and Googled “pictures of three”, tempted to imitate one of the light painting or Lego representations of the number three that popped up on my screen. In the end, I opted to carry my camera as I went about my everyday activities, staying alert for any and all things three. The little bit of wisdom I gained from this experience is that if you’re looking for it, you’re likely to find – it’s all about your lens…and I’m talking about how you see the world around you, not the glass on the front of your camera!

1. Foggy Mornings – Calgary is the sunniest of Canada’s large cities, so when we have a foggy morning, it’s noteworthy. So I definitely noticed when we woke up to fog on three different mornings over a period of about ten days in one month! From our back deck, we can look over any fog hanging in the Elbow River valley. Very early one of those mornings, there were three bits of land showing through: the lights along a street a few blocks west of us, the next hill west from us, and the Canadian Rockies about 50 km (30 miles) away.

2. Baking with Chocolate – I do a lot of baking…everything from our basic bread to treats and desserts. Baking from scratch, it’s easy to accommodate the serious allergies in the family. Plus it tastes good! In March I baked three different recipes with chocolate: chocolate revel bars, double-chocolate zucchini Bundt cake and salted chocolate-chunk cookies. The chocolate revel bars are a take on Starbuck’s chocolate-oat squares; once they’re cooled I cut them into squares and store them in an airtight container to pack into school lunches or enjoy mid-morning with a mug of tea. The double-chocolate zucchini Bundt cake is Sunday dinner dessert-worthy; it’s a great way to use up zucchini that’s starting to get soft, but I replace with chocolate sauce with a few fresh berries to cut down the calorie count. The salted chocolate-chunk cookies are a grown version of chocolate chip cookies. I got the recipe from a friend and it’s on a sheet of paper in my recipe box but I’m willing to type it out and share, if anyone wants it.

3. Ice Triangle – A lot of families walked past the nearby pond over Easter weekend and a lot of the kids couldn’t resist throwing rocks to break up some of the ice. When I went out for my after dinner walk on Easter Sunday, I noticed a perfect little triangle of ice floating in the open patch of water near the shoreline. Two of the three sides were beautifully lit by the sinking sun.

4. Third Base Line – I’m not much of a baseball fan, but I do know that three seems to be an important number in the game…three strikes and you’re out, three outs and your team loses its turn at bat, a batting average over 300 is good, and even though there are 4 bases, they’re named first, second, third and home. I’m convinced the ball diamond at Our Lady of Snows school in Canmore has one of the most beautiful locations in the world. I got down low near home base looking along the third base line for this one.

 5. Three Sisters – We have a great view of Three Sisters from our weekend getaway place in Canmore. It’s one of the most recognized mountains in the area and over the years I’ve posted plenty of photographs of this trio of peaks. This month I looked for a different vantage point. One evening I found a perspective I liked, from down in a snow-filled sand trap on the unfinished Three Sisters golf course.

Those are my three plus two for this month. There’s so much scope in this theme, I can’t wait to do a little blog-hopping via the link up over on A ‘lil Hoohaa.

I treat this photo blogging challenge like a once/month photo assignment and the one-month time frame makes it pretty low stress. New participants are welcome to join the photo blogging challenge any time. Please join us! The April theme will be posted at A ‘lil Hoohaa tomorrow.