Virginia Cheeseman Blog

Sunshine this morning which makes a change, I thought autumn was setting in with all the rain and dark skies this week. July has been a good month for business but it is now the holiday season and orders have been thin on the ground for the last few days. I have been trying to catch up on practical jobs in the bug room that keep getting put off. I have set up a large mixed millipede box and have been gradually sorting my multitude of millipede species. It seems silly to have so many smaller boxes with just one or two individuals left in there. I have of course been checking as closely as possible that I haven't thrown out any babies. Hopefully I haven't! I am selling the assorted millipedes at a knock down price on my website. If they lay eggs in there I will have to then sell the babies as 'mixed' too as I won't have a clue what they are! It is still all go here with a rather chaotic home life. I can't help getting involved with too many things and too man...

More ups and downs! On the good side my mother in-law's stent was fitted in her heart yesterday and I have nearly reached the magical 500 likes on Facebook but on the down side my poor daughter was ousted from a job she loved yesterday and is now unemployed (I would love to rant to the world but probably best not to). Great relief that I finally found the Giant Asian scorpion who has been on the loose since last week. I was actually panicking that she could have got out of my 'sealed' bug room. I had visions of her going next door to greet our new next door neighbours and their workmen (building an extension). I can't imagine where she has been hiding. Animals are frequently going walkabout in my bug room but they are generally located very quickly. The room isn't that big so goodness knows how a 6" black scorpion could hide for a week! I had the room apart several times but as you can imagine I have a huge number of tanks, boxes and various cages so there ar...

Ups and downs of life! I was going to say 'a bug lady's' life but it has had very little to do with the bugs, more family issues that I obviously cannot go into in my blog. Thankfully my mother in-law's heart operation should go ahead soon, we have visited several hospital departments this week for umpteen tests. Anyway back to the bugs - no more floods thank goodness but I have had to empty several large tanks as they were too water logged to dry out naturally. The bug room is still pretty damp in places so it looks a bit of a state but my hubby is away on a course next week so I intend to knuckle down and get everything back on track. I have lots of bugs and spiders breeding and some stunning specimens coming along. I am just about keeping up with Facebook but I must admit that Instagram has fallen a bit by the wayside this week (note to self - must try harder). I was searching through an old folder this week, I didn't find what I was looking for but I did...

The flood! I could have done with an Ark to rescue my bugs last Saturday. After a huge storm during Friday night I discovered in the morning that my bug room was awash. If you are a regular reader of my blog you may recall that this has happened before but not to this extent! Basically, the flat roof on my office and bug room has a drainage gully running along the middle, a ridiculous design but unless we could afford to knock it down and start again (which we can't) we just have to cope with it. The storm washed moss from the roof of our house into the gully, it overflowed and poured into my bug room and thankfully to a lesser extent, my office too. In real terms it could have been a lot worse. The crickets were all drowned as they were in plastic boxes and several containers of beetle larvae, cockroaches and stick insects were pretty wet but it was mostly equipment that was ruined and had to be thrown away. I am still trying to dry out the floor now. On a brighter note, it h...

Lots of new bugs this week. Some pretty spiders have come in, both spiderlings and adults, lovely scorpions and beautiful fruit beetles from the Cameroon. Hopefully the beetles will breed (there were already a few larvae in the box with them) and some of the scorpions look very fat, possibly pregnant? It seems the bugs love this weather, as do I, everything seems to be reproducing, I have baby scorpions, spiders, millipedes, cockroaches, grasshoppers everywhere. My bug room is looking pretty full, I have had to move the arboreal spider jars to a lower shelf as they were getting a bit too hot near the window. My nephew (a roofer) and husband re-roofed the bug room a couple of years ago when we moved everything indoors from the log cabin outside. My nephew said at the time that it was worth putting in as much insulation as possible and he was right. I was thinking of saving money in the winter as I didn't want the heat going straight out through the roof but I remember him saying t...