No breathing room.

Photo copyright Aji, 2023; all rights reserved.

Today's skies. You can see how much the green is paling, turning yellow and then brown; the leaves are starting to dry and curl and shrivel, too. Thus far, all we've had out of those clouds is maybe a couple of dozen scattered drops, no more.

And if we don't get real seasonal rains soon, the land is going to die off all over again.

It's been a bad week on multiple fronts. Completely apart from all the terrible out in the rest of the world today, as I said yesterday, we learned that family friends have had a tragedy. We've done what we could to help, and there may come a time when a GFM is needed, and if so, I’ll be working on pushing that, as well. Today I also paid the truck and trailer insurance (due mid-July), which is a huge expense, and we have a big, BIG expense coming out of our pockets on Sunday, because the guy we get our hay from (now that the drought has killed ours) has some good-quality stuff, suitable for Miika’s health conditions, the he’ll let us have for $17 a bale . . . as long as we buy 70 bales. And we don’t have a choice, because the drought has killed everyone else’s, too (he’s hauled this in from elsewhere), and if we don’t get it now, by winter there won’t be anything at all, never mind anything edible, and people will still be charging at least $25 or $30 bucks a bale for what little weed-riddled crap will be left. For the last 6 years, most of them have been gouging folks left and right for a piddling amount of absolute trash hay.

So the immediate stuff will be caught up, and we'll have Miika mostly covered from now through winter on the feed front. But it leaves us with no breathing room. Oh, and Wings's birthday is Saturday, and as usual, he found his gift early (just a set of three thermal-insulated mugs/bottles for him to be able to have cold and warm water/coffee/tea/soup/etc. out in the studio, no matter how extreme the temperatures get), so my surprise, modest as it was, is already shot.

Thinking that we were okay for now was entirely predicated on the assumption of consistent sales for the second half of this year; if we don't make them, then no, we're not okay now, because I have to make everything stretch a lot further than it can possibly go. There's a lot of new work on the site already, and I had planned to post Wings’s newest last night, that incredible cuff I showed here yesterday. Last night's outage (yet again) prevented me from getting it posted last night, but I'm hoping to have it up by this evening. Meanwhile, Wings has more silverwork and gemstone bead items in rotation, too. And I really do need to bring in consistent sales; the year's only half over, and there's a lot of expense to get through yet. All the links are listed below, so please share:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (current priority still the Zero-Odor sprays, because these days we're back to wet dogs again; and the liquid soaps, which we can't get locally); 
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

There's lots of fabulous work on the site, so please share all of the links. 

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2023; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.