End Of School Term

Another busy week, although not quite so many orders, it is coming towards the end of the school term. Generally at this time of the year I would be selling off as much live stock as possible before my summer holiday but as I am not going on holiday until October it is still full steam ahead and I have been buying new stock each week. Sales are bound to slow down over the next few weeks as the schools, colleges and universities shut for the summer and people are off on their holidays. Obviously people don't want to buy new pets before they go away. Having said that, I do think the recession has had an effect and far more people will be staying at home or taking shorter breaks.

I certainly had fun with all the new scorpions last Friday! I bought in nine new species from Chile, they are all reasonably small, fast moving, aggressive species. Many look very similar and I had to describe and name them all. I have had quite a bit of feedback on the names, thanks to those people who suggested more appropriate common names than my 'made up' ones. I was getting desperate by the time I came to the Orangey-Brown Chile scorpion. At least it gave people a laugh. My long suffering hubby helped photograph the different species at the weekend so I think we are pretty organised on the web site now. There are some lovely specimens and some of them look gravid, I would certainly expect to get some babies soon. They have been selling well, I may collect some more next week (not from Chile, from the reptile supplier who imported them).

I have many more tarantula spiders coming in next week, as I said recently I intend to concentrate more on arachnids and a bit less on the stick insects. I love stick insects and I'm obviously known for them but after all these years I have to admit that they are damn hard work for less and less profit. I won't be stopping them though, just cutting down. My beautiful Jungle Nymph stick insects are maturing into huge adults, they are becoming rarer, I certainly want to keep these going.

Next week is my third open afternoon. I will try and sort out some more used containers to sell and also the potted food plants that I no longer need. It's been really good selling off my old tanks and boxes as it has given me a lot more space on my verandah. It was getting ridiculously cluttered, I never have enough storage space. I have a shed at the bottom of the garden but that's full of bits and pieces that I 'may' need sometime. I really hate throwing anything away.

On a personal note my mother in-law is settling into her flat down the road, having moved from Kent a couple of weeks ago. It has been hard work getting things sorted for her and there are still many jobs on my list. My nephew and wife have to attend a funeral in Manchester next week so I will have the children for a few days and this will obviously affect work and of course my rat bag daughter is off college now and expects me to run her around everywhere. Oh the joys of being self employed and working from home. Nobody believes I actually do work!