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This summer was one of the hottest in East Tennessee that I can remember for a while. Most of the time you could find me hanging out around the pool or I stayed indoors under air-conditioning and worked at the computer. But a few mornings (actually over a month or them), I could be found painting the “barn.”

“You’re going to do what?!” my husband shouted giving me that “You’re nuts!” look. I attempted to explain my justification for such a request. The lady who cleans our house lives in a mobile home behind this barn, which happens to be on my father-in-law’s property. One day Doris, the housekeeper, was observing the view from our front porch. It is rural pastoral land with rolling hills and dotted with a few trees. From my front porch my camera and I have captured some of the most magnificent sunsets ever seen. Doris stood admiring the beauty and commented, “I wish I didn’t have to look into the back of an old barn everyday!” That was all it took to start those creative PD wheels we have in our heads rolling.

I’ve painted landscapes as long as I can remember, but I had never had a canvas quite this challenging. I agreed to give Doris a “view” to envy if she would buy the paint. My husband knew it was too late to try bargaining with me. He ranted about how I wasn’t physically able to do this, and how no one but Doris and her family would see it, and yada, yada, yada. And he was right about my being physically able to do this. Although the back of the barn can be reached from the ground, there was still a lot of stretching and straining required. And I mixed all of the colors from the three cans of primary colors of latex: red, yellow, and blue.

Some days I would return from my painting session drenched with perspiration. But after a shower, I actually felt better. Other times I would get all set up, only to go “off” and make only a couple of strokes. I often came back home in severe pain in my shoulders and neck, and my arms and hands would go numb. But I am a man . . . er – woman of my word. I completed the painting just before the frost and chilly mornings and nights arrived.

Why did I do it? You could say that I wanted to do something nice for this lady – only people driving by her home will ever see it. But she can now go on her front porch and enjoy the pastoral setting just as I do each day. There’s another smaller stretch of the barn that is fenced in. I plan to complete the picture as soon as I recuperate.

Oh, I failed to tell you the best part! I am recuperating from surgery to repair two cervical (neck) herniations. That was why I had so much pain and numbness. The neurosurgeon said if I hadn’t repaired the herniations that I could fall and instantly become a quad! And I might have never know had I not been “painting the barn.”