Stubborn.

Photo copyright Aji, 2025; all rights reserved.

Look at that perfect red. The smaller fire maple is a different subspecies, and its leaves go crimson, tinted with orange. This one is pure scarlet, and as the leaves fall, they turn purple around the edges. There are actually still green leaves close to the trunk, but from a distance, it looks like last night's hard freeze finally turned the whole thing red.

As freezes go, it was a distinctly puny one, only the thinnest rime of frost on the grass, not particularly crunchy even early. I took that shot around nine this morning, I think, and there was still frost in the shade when I went out; a few minutes later, it had turned to water, even though the sun wasn't anywhere near it at that point.

We even have stubborn flowers still in bloom.

That will change tonight, a lot of it; it'll be colder, and enough cold nights in a row will start withering everything. No sign of precipitation in the forecast for basically the rest of the month, at least for now, though, so our first snow might show up very late after all.

Today was errands day, which usually winds up being a Friday, and it means that everything else gets put on hold for the day, which is why I'm at this so late now. With luck, we won't need to go anywhere all weekend, and I can try to ge caught up a little bit, but I know better than to depend on that. There are never enough hours in the day, and that just gets worse every year. I'll be working late again tonight, once again, and it'll probably be the same through the weekend. But then, I'm stubborn, too.

I also need to bring in a lot more sales than what we've done on average this whole god-awful year. There's a lot of gorgeous new work up, but I've got to sell it for it to make any difference. I posted four new ones the other night, around midnight: those two pairs of earrings, both Goth-y and perfect for Spooky Season, here [this pair now sold!] and here; and two new necklaces, very different but also seasonally apt, here and here. And there's a lot more to come, once these two sets of commissions are done and with their people. But in the meantime, we [which means I] have got to change this trajectory, and fast. To that end, links are here:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here;
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

And we do still need to make those regular weekly sales, so please share all of the links. We really do need this to be a better month than what we've had so far this year.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2025; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.