A story in a single image

Assignment #4 for Writing 101 at Blogging University is to create a story from a single image. Images — including photographs and works of art — can also act as starting points for stories, essays, poems, and personal musings. For this exercise, use one of the images provided as the creative spark for today’s post. You might use it as the setting for a story or poem, write about how it makes you feel, or describe a memory conjured by it.
Window

For today’s assignment I chose this image of a window. For me this window images inspires a memory from my childhood. It reminds me of the loft of our barn growing up.

We grew up on a small farm in Massachusetts. It was only a 2-acre piece of property but we managed to make the most of it. We had a huge garden, where we grew all kinds of vegetables. We raised dairy goats and chickens, which provided us with fresh milk and eggs (and even fresh meat occasionally but that wasn’t all that great of a concept to us kids). We also had a horse, rabbits, ducks, geese, dogs and barn cats, as well. My siblings and I, spent lots of time weeding and tending the garden or caring for all of our animals…milking goats, cleaning stalls and pens, feeding and watering animals…along with just being kids and playing with all of them t00.

But I do remember spending a lot of time up in the loft of the barn to hide out. My sister and I were constantly being kicked outside so that we would put down our books and go play! Which would turn out to be us sneaking our books out of the house and going to read up in the loft. We spent hours upon hours up in the loft reading books like Little House on the Prairie series, Anne of Green Gables series, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Chronicles of Narnia and many more…all under the guise of going outside to play.

We spent so much time up in the loft, that a couple of times I remember us bringing the vacuum up there to clean out the cob webs and spider webs! We used bales of hay as furniture and we would set up our ‘couch’ by the window of the loft so that we could get some fresh air and a breeze, as well as have advance notice if we needed to stash our books. It was a pretty great place cause we knew our parents couldn’t actually get up there. The cats would keep us company and I even remember that once, one of the cats had her kittens up there…so we got to spend some extra time with the tiny kittens when we went up there to play.

I wish I had a loft to play in these days! At the moment, I don’t have a loft to hide out in…but throughout the years I have worked in many different horse barns and have searched out lofts and hay rooms to sort of relive my childhood moments…nothing like spending your break time hiding in a a stack of hay with a book!

8 thoughts on “A story in a single image”

    1. I like images…and I briefly thought of finding another (mainly cause I was thinking doors…I may be a little obsessed with them) but wanted to try and use what was provided and branch out of my norm 🙂 Thanks!!

  1. Oh my goodness, yours sounds soooo much like my childhood in the mountains of New Hampshire. We only had horses, dogs and cats but I resonate to “My sister and I were constantly being kicked outside so that we would put down our books and go play!”
    I did go out without my books though. I built a stage in the top story of our barn and my brothers and I made up plays. The link I provided with my name will take you to a post I wrote about my barns.
    What fun to meet another introverted, book reading farm girl.

    1. How fun!! We weren’t so much into plays…but we did do a lot of imaginary play on our little farm. Farm kids have a pretty good life I think. Love NH…went to college at UNH and lived there for many years…my heart is in NH! Agreed…so much fun meeting another introverted, book reading farm girl 🙂

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