Making the Best of a Bad Situation

One year ago today we were into the 8th day of what would turn out to be 12 straight days without electricity due to a massive ice storm that slammed into Nebraska and Kansas.  For rural residents like us, when you lose electricity, you lose everything – including water. Fortunately, we were able to purchase a small generator on the second day of this outage, so we could have the refrigerator running, a small space heater, and then switch off between a lamp and a small tv or the computer. Those days were hard work for my husband, who hauled in 8 gallons of gas for the generator and 10-12 gallons of water every day so we could wash, flush the toilets, cook, and etc. For sure I am not made of pioneer stock, and my heart goes out to the people on the West Coast who are currently experiencng much the same situation right now. It’s not often that central Nebraska makes the national news, but we certainly did one year ago.

What the national news did not say was that this was actually our second power outage, as we had one that lasted 4 1/2 days leading up to and ending on Christmas morning. We didn’t have the generator at that time, so did our best to keep warm using the oven  and fireplace. We eventually burned every piece of burnable wood on the property, including a lovely section of birch that my father-in-law had brought back from Minnesota years ago. When I picked up that log to put on the fire, something in my head made me stop, look at the bark, and then find my exacto knife so I could peel off as much bark as possible to save for some future use. In the back of my head was a vague idea of using it for a writing surface, trying to make a basket, or something similar.  I just could not let that bark be burned to ash when it was so beautiful.

Eventually, the lights came back on and I found myself in the studio looking at those bark pieces and thinking of what I could use them for. The final result was a series of acrylic paintings of birch trees on birch bark; having done them I am ever so glad that I chose to save that bark. Talk about making the best of a bad situation!

 Moonrise Birch

Sunrise Birch

    

Sunset Birch

 Finally, my apologies for the inactivity on this blog the last month and a half.  Recovery from my knee surgery has been long and hard, and sitting at the computer is something that has been extremely difficult for me to do for any length of time.  I believe that I am finally on the downhill side of the recovery, and hope to have entries made more often. Thanks for sticking by me!