More firsts.

Photo copyright Aji, 2022; all rights reserved.

More firsts: The pear tree blossomed yesterday, all at once. And yes, that is smoke haze you see in the background; we now have about 175,000 acres burned to the east, plus another 25,000 two counties west of us and heading this way. The Hermits' Peak/Calf Canyon Complex jumped from 66K acres yesterday morning to just shy of a full 100K overnight, courtesy of yesterday's winds. The winds are supposed to continue for the next four days, and return later in the week after a day or two of lower velocity, so every acre of containment is especially precious now.

Our bigger worry, though, is a spark igniting everything locally because some jackass couldn't be bothered. A tossed cigarette butt, a dragging chain, a spark from a straight pipe or someone deciding to grill outdoors — any one of those can burn whole worlds to the ground here now. Some we're living under this existential threat now, too, on top of the 1,200-year drought that has the land dying of thirst and the unchecked pandemic in one of three now five red zones in the state now.

Speaking of "unchecked pandemic," we had two terrible examples yesterday. Wings picked up a few more pure-grass bales from a local guy, because most of what's out there has at least a little alfalfa in it and we can't risk undoing Miika's progress by her getting into any of it. He delivered it . . . sans mask but with a nasty cough. A couple hours later, after a week of the company dithering and not delivering, the sand we ordered for the horses' stall was finally delivered yesterday, an hour and forty minutes later than promised . . . by a guy without a mask but also with a nasty cough. I was indoors, and Wings was thoroughly masked and kept his distance as much as possible, but it shows why this county is one of the worst at the community transmission level, and also shows that, courtesy of the administration's genocidal non-containment policies, cases are going untested, unreported, and untreated while being spread like the wildfires burning up the land.

Despite all of that, and a bunch of other colonizer nonsense too, we were blessed yesterday to make a really good sale, and so we'll be able to cover the most urgent expenses in the weeks to come. But I'm still increasingly disabled, and I can't work if I can't get the pain under control, or get back my ability to walk [mostly] unhindered. That's the point of the extremely costly therapy: rewiring my brain to lower my pain response and let my body start finding ways to heal a little. So we will still need to make steady, consistent sales over the course of the coming months to keep everything above water. Links are here:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (priorities are first and foremost, the other ladder, the Thermacell lanterns [the flies are already out, so the mosquitoes won't be far behind], and the liquid soaps, which prevent our hands from cracking and bleeding given that we're forced to wash them fifty times a day;
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

We're still hoping to put aside enough for a new well when the ground thaws enough to drill in the spring, too, Nah, we've given up on the well. No one's available to drill before the latter half of summer, and the tax burden means we would never be able to afford it anyway. But it's perhaps even more of a good time to make a purchase, because Uncle Sam is a vindictive colonizer, and my current stress levels about paying it all are off the charts. And there's lots of fabulous work, so please share all of the links. 

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2022; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.