Another week of sunshine, oh I love this weather. I just hope it lasts for tomorrow when my nephew is getting married. It's been a busy week, part work and part pleasure. I can really start planning for my annual break now as it is finally 'next month'. I will be buying in very little before I go and then frantically restocking upon my return. If you want something on my website, now is the time to buy it as items will start selling out and they may not be replaced until September. I am playing catch up this afternoon as I was up in London at the theatre yesterday and I have been out on a bug hunt with my great nephew's school this morning. It was good fun, we went on a coach trip to a local nature reserve and took part in pond dipping with the rangers. We found lots of interesting creepy crawlies, the green damselfly larvae were beautiful. I think the kids enjoyed the bug hunt too!
All is well in my bug house. I got a shock the other morning to find that one of the Java Orb web egg sacs had hatched overnight and the spiderlings were everywhere. I thought that I had left the lid off the jar but as it happens the net lid was on but the tiny multitude of spiderlings had managed to squeeze out through the holes. I collected as many as I could with my children's paint brush and set them up in a tank with a much finer netting lid. I hope they can manage to eat fruit flies, they are amazingly small. I have had a second egg sac hatch from my Giant Huntsman so I have rather a lot of these now, hence them being sold very cheaply on my website. My Cobalt Blue spider that killed her mate a few months back has finally laid an egg sac. I thought she was about to when she started building a large burrow and hiding away. I'm worried that all is not well though as I saw a couple of 'loose eggs' on the burrow floor. I wasn't sure whether to disturb the spider and check on the state of the egg sac but I have decided against it as they are such temperamental spiders. I really don't want to upset her and risk her eating all the remaining eggs or discarding them. Time will tell if I get any spiderlings, I'm not sure if they will survive, I think there is a 50/50 chance.
All my stick insects look healthy. The Peruvian Fern are hatching and happily munching on various ferns from around my garden. Someone posted me a box of Black Beauty stick insect nymphs and they are eating the potted Privet that I grew from cuttings last year. I don't know who sent them but thanks anyway! I still have one huge, bright green stick insect that came in with the spiders from Java. She is laying lots of eggs and thankfully eating Eucalyptus leaves. She came in with some Guava leaves but I don't have a Guava bush in my jungle of a garden. I love my garden but the weeds are winning at the moment. My husband says that there are no such thing as weeds, only wild flowers. I grew some Teasels from seed this year, they have given me a good laugh, I love thistle type plants but I didn't know how tall they grew. I planted them in all the flowerbeds around my garden. They have now grown to about seven foot tall and look like Triffids.
I wouldn't be me if I didn't have a moan - I do wish people would continue on the same email when they are asking me questions. I receive a huge number of emails and often have no idea what the person is talking about when they are following on from something in another email. I don't have the time to go back through my emails to try and track down any previous correspondence, especially if it was days beforehand as it will be lost in a sea of deleted mails. Please reply to the email that I send you and then I can see what has previously been written. On a positive point I must say that I do appreciate the amount of people who take the time to let me know that their order has arrived safe and sound. Thankfully I have had no problems with the post lately. I was dismayed to see in the newspaper this week about Royal Mail being sold off. I do hope this doesn't lead to more strikes. Hopefully it will lead to a much better and more reliable company.
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