I want to thank all who contributed to my grafting questions. It was Michael Phillips contribution that helped me most of all to sort out something I suspected- that in the northeast, it is likely that the closer you do the grafting from first sign of shoot-growth the better the results for cool weather growers like apples and pears. I would add that if you graft right before shoot growth, from my experience, you get at least the same advantage as grafting a week later when there are clear signs. When I talk about grafting, by the way, my experience is grafting on bearing age or near bearing age trees in the ground.