This post is for the Photo Blogging Challenge, March 2021 edition. Why eight? To celebrate eight years of PBC posts and the handful of hardcore participants, who have become blogging friends over the years. 🙂

Thanks so much to host PJ, for the monthly prompt to get out and about to take photos and think more creatively about things.

As usual, I spent about a half hour at the start of the month researching the theme. Did you know ogdoad is a synonym for octad – a group or set of eight? That made me think of octave, an eight note interval in music. And how proudly I announced I could finally reach an “ocward” when I was practicing the piano at about age eight!! 🙂 Eight is the atomic number for oxygen, which got me thinking about taking (yet another) deep breath while (im)patiently waiting my turn for a vaccination. Eight is also associated with wealth and luck, something we could all do with a bit more of right now.

Enough with the facts and personal stories…time to share five photos that somehow relate to eight:

1. Octagon

Many countries around the world install road signs that are red octagons with white trim, with or without the word “stop” in the local language. We spotted this one early on a Saturday morning and I took the photo mostly because it’s at an intersection with the Three Sisters Parkway. There was a lot of talk about this road in Canmore, AB this month. That’s because it’s the main thoroughfare between two proposed subdivisions and downtown Canmore. Just one lane in each direction (and only twelve paces wide at this location), if the subdivisions are approved the road is going to be used by up to 3,000 vehicles/hour – the perfect recipe for a non-stop traffic jam.

Continuing the theme of eight, we spent the first eight days of March preparing to present at the public hearing on the proposed subdivisions. After 6 days of public input and a final day of developer input, the hearing adjourned. Now we’re waiting for Town Council’s decision.

2. Eighth Basket

There’s a nine basket disc golf course just a few minutes walk from home. When we still had geokids at home, we’d play it a few times a year. It’s been a few years now since we last played. But on the snowy day I was out taking this photograph, there were a few hardy souls playing a round.

3. Lego

A classic Lego brick: the 2 x 4 = 8 stud, full height rectangle. Growing up, we had a bin full of white and red ones. Mr. GeoK had mainly white ones. Two eight-studded bricks can be put together in 24 different ways. And six eight-studded bricks can be put together in an astonishing 915,103,765 ways! For this photo I found 8 different colours of eight-studded bricks. Apparently there are now 39 colours of Lego bricks – that’s a lot more choice compared to my childhood days. 🙂

4. Eight Fresh Herb Varieties

We bought a 9 pod Aerogarden early this year and it came with eight kinds of herb seeds: curly parsley, Italian parsley, dill, chives, mint, Thai basil, thyme and regular basil (x2). We’re having a hard time consuming all the parsley and dill. The main reason for this low-effort indoor herb garden is to grow fresh basil for homemade pizza!

5. Eight Slices, Please

Speaking of which, here’s a freshly-cooked Margherita, Neapolitan-style pizza, ready for slicing. We haven’t dined in at a restaurant in more than a year. And we’ve ordered takeout pizza just twice over the past 12 months. So ever since we bought our countertop pizza oven, we’ve been enjoying pizza for Sunday dinner. I’m happy because I don’t have to think about what to cook on Sundays and we’re all happy because it tastes so good! This is one pandemic habit we’ll be carrying over to the new normal…whatever that is. 😉

To see how other PBC participants photographed representations of eight, head on over to a ‘lil HooHaa and look for the link-up at the bottom of the page. April’s theme is “Drink Up” and new participants are always welcome. Please consider joining us, to help make year nine bigger and better than ever!