There is something so human, so right about apple orchards. Every abandoned farmstead from the dustbowl has an apple tree upon which to rest one’s eyes. Relaxing beneath its shade, I fall into speculating about the families long gone - begin to sense their lingering spirits. Around the shores of Lake Superior, the former inhabitants of now mechanized lighthouses and abandoned fishery camps often left behind currant bushes, rhubarb patches and always apple trees -  unnamed varieties of tart cooking apples that have never tasted of pesticides.

For years I've driven past a nearby Centennial Farm, one that has been under the care of one family for at least a century. The ancient apple tree growing near the house kept beckoning, and I kept intending to pay tribute to its beauty.  So often one intends to do the right thing, until it’s too late – the child has grown and left, the elder has died or the ancient tree has succumbed to lightning. This spring, I went back to look, and, fortunately, the aged apple tree was still there. Throughout April, nearly every other day I drew a new feature of the striking tree, amazed that it has put forth blossoms for yet another year.

Many artists have their mountain, their pond, their cathedral or their beloved, whose visage they record from youth into age, and in every and all weather, creating a testimony of their passing that confirms and explores the many aspects of the one.  Here is an apple tree that would sustain just such an effort. If only it would survive another year…

“Twin Apples” and “Aging Trees” were both aging apple trees drawn in small backyard orchards in the Sumava region of southern Bohemia - inscribed into copper plates during my wandering about this mountainous backwater, as I was getting to know Jana, my wife to be, and where she was from.  Something  about the aging trees in an extended village structure scattered up through the valleys from the fertile bottoms and thinning out into woodlands up topside as it neared the Bavarian border seem to sum it all up - Germans just over the hill - our people on this side.  They have of course all been abused by the centralized powers and been smugglers on both sides of this tenuous divide.