Aaron Golas

While I was on a roll with the whole web design schtick, I decided to give the ol’ website a new look. To that end, I drew a half-dead tree (yes, I know it’s up in the header of the page, but I’m putting it here as well because it’s my website, dammit):

I know it looks all-dead, but it’s just dormant as we in the northern hemisphere head into winter. It’s also still a work in progress–a living piece of art, so to speak.

There’s something beautiful about a half-dead tree, since despite being half-dead it is still fully alive.

We have an heirloom apple tree in my front yard back home, brought as a sapling from Germany about 100 years ago. A full half of the tree is dead wood (which we dare not cut off lest we put the tree off-balance), and yet the other half grows full and lush every year, providing apples that my grandmother turns into the most incredible applesauce and apple crisps.

For several years now, I’ve been trying to clone the tree from cuttings. It’s a race against time; every summer, I fear that a hurricane or something will knock the tree down before I can take new cuttings. I came damn close last year, growing a one-inch-long section of root from a hardwood cutting completely by accident. Before that, I wasn’t even sure I could root from this type of tree at all, let alone one so very old. Now that I know what I’m doing, this might be the year I finally succeed in preserving my pomaceous birthright for future generations.

This isn’t a picture of my apple tree, mind you. This is a different half-dead tree, with a character all its own. (When a tree loses its leaves, that’s when you can tell part of its true character that’s obscured for most of the year.)