Journaling Only (Video)

My interpretation of today's LOAD challenge was to do a page with only journaling.  There are many times in my life where I have no photos.  My parents owned and operated a retail business that was open 65 hours a week and they had no employees so they were very busy.  Following me around and taking photos just wasn't part of the plan.  I remember getting a camera when I was in my early teens and I took some photos but I don't know what happened to them.  I wasn't very good at keeping up with things back then.  When I got to my 20's, I didn't do any better and so I don't have any photos of that time either.

Anyway there are plenty of stories to tell that either have to have a photo made now to make up or just go without.  The hammock we had in the yard is one of those.  The hammock is long gone but not my memory of the summer days.

Here's the journaling:

My dad hated that hammock.  It was stretched over a free-standing green metal frame in the yard.  He hated it because it was in his way mowing grass.  He would have to get off his mower, move it, mow and then repeat the process to put it back to wherever it was -usually near the pin oak closest to the shop.  But he set it up summer after summer when I was in elementary school because I used it.

I know where the hammock sat because I was so often in it.  I loved the hammock.  I would be enveloped in its thickly woven fabric and look up at the clouds just watching them pass.  I loved the patterns they made.  My thoughts were free.  We had a large wide but fairly shallow yard with the neighbor’s cows in a pasture behind. They mooed sometimes.  More often noise came from our tar and gravel road that connected two state highways and was a short cut to the elementary school.  Individual cars passed often some stopped at the shop open until 8 each evening.

Our yard provided plenty of places to lay in the hammock or the grass and watch the sky.  It was usually fragrant from being cut at least weekly.  I rode my green bike endlessly from the playhouse my grandfather built me up one gravel and grass driveway, across a short distance of road and down through the shop parking lot over and over again. I never rode on the grass. I’d pretend that 3 rounds of this was the distance to work and 4 rounds the distance from my make believe house to the store.  My imagination flew along with my long blondish brown hair.  I was and still am a good rider.

The flat space of yard in front of the shop was the best spot for croquet which I could play for hours by myself.  Occasionally, Daddy, and more rarely Mother, played with me.  She was Mama then before I got high minded in junior high school and changed it to Mother.

The neighbor’s youngest daughter, Pam, came over to play some.  She was the one who discovered the echo of our little valley that you got when you stood in front of the bird bath in the lowest point of the yard and yelled at the top of your lungs.  The sound bounced off the mountain right back to you.  Mostly we played at her house and sometimes we laid in her yard and watched the clouds over her house. 

I don’t remember exactly when Daddy stopped putting up the hammock.  It was before we got a cat – or rather a cat got us – because I remember laying under that tree petting the cat in the summer.  And I sure don’t believe I’d have ever gotten a cat into a hammock.

For the page, I used watercolors and paint to create the background.  Originally, I didn't do the sun but added it along the way as I needed some more color.

 The border along the bottom is two strips of paper pieced in the middle with several October Afternoon stickers and some stamping in between.

Here's the process video at YouTube:


Do you have a lot of photos of your childhood?  If you have children or a child in your life, take photos!  And print them and save them!  I beg you.  I so wish I could turn back time and get my lovely memories in print.

My YouTube channel hit 1900 subscribers today!  I'm very excited and grateful for all who watch. Thanks for stopping by today!