A pleasant week, warm at last

A pleasant week, warm at last and in only two days it will officially be Spring. The bugs are all going well and many are breeding prolifically, especially the stick insects, but there is still no bramble in sight! Off to the good old Homebase car park again today for more brambles. I will leave my mother in-law in the car as 'look out', I do hate it when people come over and ask what you are doing. When I tell them, they think I am mad anyway. My garden is coming back to life after being completely flattened by snow and I am really pleased to report that it is once again full of frogs and my ponds are full of frog spawn (if anyone lives locally and would like some spawn you are welcome to some). I actually saw two butterflies in my garden yesterday, a Peacock in the back garden and then I went to empty some rubbish out the front and saw a beautiful bright yellow Brimstone.

It hasn't been such a great week for spiders. The spiders that I was expecting last Friday arrived on time but many had perished in the post, it was extremely sad. The winter has been so cold that everyone posting out live creatures has been totally focussed on keeping them warm in transit, me included but I also worry about over heating them. I never use sealed polystyrene boxes, I know lots of people swear by them but I think that the box was to blame for this tragedy and several that I have experienced over the years. I have quite a few more tarantula species due in next week and hopefully now that the weather has finally picked up I will be able to obtain many more interesting bugs and spiders regularly. I am looking at getting some more cockroach species, I sell a significant number of cockroaches now and they are pretty easy to keep, feed and breed (plus I like them!). The biggest problem that I find is lugging the boxes full of cockroaches around. I keep most of my cockroaches on peat and it weighs a considerable amount. I visit the gym three times a week and I would consider myself reasonably strong for my size but it is a struggle. The new shelving that my hubby put up at the end of last year is great (I no longer have to worry about the walls of my log cabin caving in - the old shelves were attached to the walls) but they are deep and high. I bought a kick stool recently, it is certainly better than putting all my weight on the little IKEA stool that I was using. Unfortunately I have had another disaster with an egg sac. I set up a nice new home for my huge Natal Brown Birdeater and gently set about moving her and her egg sac into it. I had no trouble as she was in a terracotta pot so I simply picked it up and put it in the new home but then I thought the egg sac looked a bit flat. I got my tweezers and managed to coax the mum to let go, only to discover that the egg sac had completely dried out. She is now in a lovely new tank but there will be no baby Natal Browns as I sold all three of the males that I had! The 'hopefully' mated Cobalt Blue spider has made herself a burrow and looks quite plump so fingers crossed. My Peruvian Green Velvet spiderlings have all moulted again and are running around faster than ever. I really need to pot them up individually as I don't want them to start eating each other but it's a daunting task (perhaps I will leave it until next week).

I am still undecided about open afternoons. Quite a few people have asked when I am having another one but I think I may stick to people calling on a Saturday by appointment. I know most people prefer to just turn up on the day but it is too difficult to organise as I need someone to help me and it is very stressful when several people arrive at the same time or nobody turns up at all. I'm convincing myself as I write this. It was very pleasant when I had several people visit a few Saturday's ago, they were spaced out throughout the day and I had time to talk and show things to everyone.

I think that's it for another week, I'm sure I could go on and on but I have lots of spiders that need feeding this morning, then I'm off out with my mother in-law and then I'm having a nice massage later this afternoon at my local gym, in aid of Sports Relief.