Today was the MOFGA webinar on grafting (specifically, apple trees) that I had been waiting for. The rootstock had arrived in the big carton that FedEx brought to Newton, and I brought the rest of the supplies which had come earlier. I went out and cut down several sticks of scionwood from the tree that …
Author Archives: deanb
Up to Casco
Fed Ex showed up in the first 1/4 of the estimated delivery window with a long carton from Fedco Trees. I didn’t open it, for several reasons: It was held together with a lot of those ugly huge copper staples; I was pretty sure what was in it; and in any event we were going …
Started Duo Yiddish course
Yesterday I saw that Duolingo has announced a Yiddish course. I signed up for it today. My father’s parents were native speakers of Yiddish. My father knew a fair bit of it, but I don’t think he was ever fluent in it. He didn’t speak much of it around the house. On the other hand, …
Duolingo Strategy 2
I didn’t get around to strategy in the previous post. Duolingo is deliberately involved in “gamification of language learning”, that is, making it a game. It has weekly contests for how much you can study, measured in experience points. Starting first thing Monday morning (Midnight Sunday night Universal Time) as soon as you complete one …
Duolingo Strategy
Some time between the time Arlene & I went to Costa Rica (on a Caravan tour, in 2010) and to Guatemala (another Caravan tour, in 2015) I started studying Spanish on a website called Duolingo. Actually, Duolingo kept track of me; it says I started in September, 2014. I got surprisingly far by the Guatemala …
Back in Whole Foods
In the next step of emerging from the pandemic, I went food shopping at Whole Foods. In what some people call “the before times”, Arlene would go shopping there three or more times per week, buying what she wanted for that day’s meals. During the pandemic we have had virtually all of our food delivered, …
Quick Notes Apr 4
We went walking in Rock Meadow, a conservation area in Belmont, with Charley, Maija, and Ari. Part of the idea was to give Patsy some time alone when she could concentrate on her thesis. Arlene and I used to go birding in Rock Meadow often, but we’ve only been there twice in quite some time. …
Inside a Speedball Handle
Indexed some mounts for Fred Mullet stamp dies that Arlene had and wants to use for gel plate printing Fixed three Speedball linoleum tool handles and learned that their collets are really pretty simple There was a broken blade jammed inside this Speedball linoleum tool handle that I wasn’t able to get out until I …
TJs second time in a year
This is definitely an “emerging from the pandemic” post; the big event of the day was that I ventured to Trader Joe’s to do some serious grocery shopping. Arlene and I had been there once before since the start of the pandemic; it was during special early morning hours (and we had got up early …
Grafting a Quince tree
My big project for this spring is to learn how to graft apple trees. The biggest reason is that one of our apple trees in Casco is some unidentified heirloom variety. All of the apple trees that were there when we bought the place have been doing poorly for the last several years. We actually …