Friday again!

Friday again! Not sure where this week has gone, it has flown by. I have obviously been busy (nothing new there!). I have been rearranging my heavy plastic boxes that sit on a large shelving unit. I have been sorting out a multitude of millipedes and re-housing some of them. The problem is that when I have taken out the millipedes that I can see from the large box of mulch, leaves and pieces of wood, there may well be tiny babies and possibly eggs that I have not seen. I am therefore putting those 'used' boxes on a higher shelf and not disturbing them for a couple of weeks (perhaps longer). I can then get them down and check again before I empty the contents onto my flower beds (what's left of my flower beds since I discovered hedgehogs in our garden and can no longer use slug pellets). I have taken some of the millipedes off my website as I need to hold back stock for breeding. The Fire millipedes are beautiful, I would hate to see these disappear from the hobby so I need to keep enough to continue the colony.

My scorpions seem to be going great guns, I have lots of babies and I'm really pleased to report that the tiny Dune Devil scorpions have now left their mother's back and are living independently. There are only half a dozen or so but they are looking good, I re-housed them yesterday. I have set them up in a nice little box that I bought this week from the internet. It wasn't what I thought I was ordering, the boxes were much smaller in reality but I'm sure I can use them. The larger boxes that I ordered were the correct ones but all of them were smashed to pieces in transit! I phoned the company and they are sending replacements but what a waste. All they needed was some packing in the box and a bit of care in the van delivering them. People are always remarking on my packing techniques, it may not look beautiful (I recycle everything I can) but I have had a lot of practice and almost everything that I send arrives in one piece. I cringe when people show me YouTube links of customers opening their parcels but I have never seen one yet where the customer wasn't happy. So that has to be good.

I have bought in a few new captive bred bugs this week. I have more of the Giant Spiny Assassin bug nymphs. I really want to get these breeding, they are quite spectacular as adults. I also got some lovely, large, stocky, Wood Nymph stick insects. One of the species is said to be extinct in the wild due to Palm oil plantations annihilating their natural habitat. How sad is that?

I didn't get any replies about a possible open afternoon (this weekend) so I guess that in itself speaks volumes. If you have been following me on Facebook you may have seen an advert from the early days that a guy sent to me recently. It was fascinating in so many ways and not least that it mentioned having open afternoons on every Wednesday and Saturday when people could just turn up without an appointment. I know I had regular open afternoons and that they were well attended but I don't recall them being that regular! As I've said before, living in London made it so much easier with great public transport links. I am still considering allowing visitors during the winter when things are slower and possibly trying out an open day or two. I obviously had a lot more free time in the past. These days my life has gone into overdrive, in those days I had only kids to look after but now I seem to have amassed a number of adults and they are much trickier to deal with.

I'm pleased to say that I did eventually make it to Legoland last Friday with my family (3 adults and 6 kids), we had to reschedule twice due to pouring rain. It was a very nice day, a little rain in the morning but a lovely afternoon, the park was packed. I did post photos of the Spinning Spider ride on Facebook - I'm getting the hang of it at last. I am still working on the care guides for my website, I know they are desperately needed. I spoke to my website guy this week and he hopes to upgrade my site to a more phone/tablet friendly version at the end of September. It is a big job for him with all the add-ons that I have, like this blog and the fact that I keep some notes on my customers (99% are positive, I promise). I couldn't cope without my notes, I write everything down or my life would descend into chaos, I know it has been pointed out what a control freak I am. I prefer to call it super organised!

Must get on, Teddi is sitting in her basket at my feet and her eyes are saying "I need my walk". Now that our daughter has a new job (she started on Wednesday and is so far loving it) the morning dog walk is all down to me again. I can't believe as I look out the window that it is actually sunny, there was a monsoon when I got to the furthest part of the park yesterday and of course I had no jacket (like an idiot). Monday is a bank holiday so my next posting day will be Tuesday. I have just realised that I again don't have any orders for outside the UK (I prefer to post those on Mondays only). Not sure what has happened there, I haven't sent anything abroad for the last couple of weeks, how odd? It is probably due to the holiday season but I'm pleased to say that I have had plenty of UK orders this week (perhaps nobody wanted to venture out in all this rain so they thought they would cheer themselves up by getting a new pet). Hope everyone has a good bank holiday weekend and the sun keeps shining!