(no subject)

I'm very grumpy today. The neighbours across the way had a party last night that started with several hours of dirt bikes in the afternoon running in circles and up and down the road, punctuated with occasional screams and crash type sounds. Then loud music, lots of swearing, some fireworks shot into the yard beside mine (which isn't theirs), doing dirt bike jumps in my ditch, parking in the middle of the road and swearing a lot, driving probably well over a hundred up and down the road, more swearing, and then at midnight-thirty turning the music up and angling a dirt bike so the light shone into my bedroom window for an hour and a half (I think they were trying to angle it across the yard to give themselves light to party, but it was an unfortunate angle). Right before the sun went down the dirt bike people went from jumping my ditch to slowly cruising along my fenceline. I am not sure any single one of them knew a word other than "fuck", at the very least it was more common than any other word or punctuation, and one had on a shirt that said "team shit stain" which at the moment I find hard to disagree with.

I was kind of hoping-- there were some kids doing 140 down a side street (km, not miles) when I was first here and they got into an accident and the engine flew out of the car, went through the roof, and got caught in someone's roof rafters in one of the houses next to the road. No one was badly injured somehow, and I'm not sure whose insurance handled the re-roofing, but you sometimes do wish for something like that. I'm not proud of it, and I'm reasonably sure it wouldn't fix anything.

The pigs did not like the loud noise and broke out of the pen -- first time they've done so -- to shelter on the opposite side of the house from the noise. Thea eventually came in and asked me for help. Solly had trouble staying calm on her walk-- to be fair I did too. The white crowned sparrows that had been around my place for the last week all left, though they're starting to come back this morning.

So today I build a new pigpen in the back, run the hose out there, and try to stave off my crash till Monday.

Next week I should definitely deal with the downstairs bedroom and move down there.

Just think, if I had a solarium on the front of my house there'd be one more wall to block sound.

(no subject)

Yesterday I did my first sustained whip-and-tongue grafting. The rootstocks were pretty small and I only got through maybe 16. I only cut myself a little, shallow cuts that really only prevent me from working on the wheel and not from doing anything else (the clay packs into cuts with the pressure I put on my fingers and tends to infect them).

I don't love the tape I was using, some kind of micropore stuff. I realized only late last night I could use wax resist as, well, wax, so I need to do that this morning. I'm very very very curious to see how well they do. I had some hose issues etc so they got wet after being wrapped.

I still have at least a little of all the scions left, abotu twenty more rootstocks, and lots of wild saskatoons. I'm going to try some chip budding, try adding some bits to my big trees, and adding bits to the saskatoons. But, not today. Today I recover from last night's party across the way, and from the concentration needed for grafting yesterday morning.

I want to say it's easier than I thought, but that depends on whether anything takes. Rootstock and scion the same size would help a lot. Better tape would help a lot. A proper grafting knife, really sharp, did help a lot, and I only started getting cut because I didn't resharpen halfway through.