This year is disappearing fast

This year is disappearing fast, I’m sure the years are speeding up as I get older. Perhaps it is just that we don’t seem to have had hardly any sunny days this year. The storms all week have been amazing. The huge claps of thunder and the blue flashes of zig zagging lightening have been more like tropical storms than the weather we generally have in England. The garden is looking good, it does resemble a jungle but I like it that way and so does the wildlife. I am just so grateful to our roofing guy who came to repoint our roof recently and ended up, dare I say it “fixing” my office/bug room roof. It is 15 years this month since we moved to this house, 15 years of flooding in my bug room. Can it really be properly fixed this time? Many people have tried and failed (the roof design is awful). I am so confident that I have dared to stock the shelves with my precious bugs on that side of the room for the first time ever!

Everything is looking good in the bug room. It’s been a busy half term week. It was a mammoth task feeding all my tarantulas on Wednesday this week (especially with my niece’s son’s help, my sister was supposed to be looking after them but she was stuck in Luxembourg as her flight the previous day was cancelled due to the storms). I have a huge number of spiders since the BTS (British Tarantula Society) exhibition a couple of weeks ago. I have some beautiful specimens. Just yesterday I had 2 people call to collect spiders. One had ordered online and just popped in to collect, the other had pre-booked a slot through my Ginny’s Jungle experiences on the website as he wished to choose a spider. I am still working on the Ginny’s Jungle side of my business but it is slow going as I’m so incredibly busy at this time of year with the postal side of things. Both guys were really nice, I much prefer meeting up with people than just sending my little friends in the post.

I began informing customers of the day that they would receive their order only a couple of weeks ago and it seems to be a great success. Before this my customers simply received a despatched email when the order was on its way. It makes things more complicated for me but I think it is very worthwhile for my customers. I frequently get notes on orders to leave the parcel somewhere safe but I’m not Amazon, the animals are live, the parcel will require someone to be in and to sign for it. I’m always trying new ideas, some work and some don’t! The ‘buy or browse’ section on Ginny’s Jungle is still a bit awkward and I’m not sure it says all that it needs to. I have updated it this week as I had realised that in its old form it just didn’t work. Having people, especially children, turn up and choose their bugs in a 20 minute or even a 30 minute slot was chaos. It works fine for spiders but not for bugs that are housed communally. The Bug Keepers experience is a much better option for children and I have one booked for this coming Sunday. The parties are great but when the kids come to me they get to see everything and join in with feeding and learning about keeping the animals.

I’ve not heard from Super Simon, my website administrator but I will give him a call soon to check on the GDPR situation, making my website secure and last but not least, seeing if it is possible to make my site and hopefully the blog specifically, accept emojis (at present if I add an emoji, when I come to upload the blog entry, I find it scrambled). It reminds me of the time that my emails were censored when I sent anything to my husband’s previous work email address. Things that were quite innocent were deleted automatically from my email and he didn’t know what I was talking about. I recall writing about the Blue Tits in their nest and someone called Richard but in its shortened form. All very funny but also rather annoying.

I don’t seem to have got far with the blog but I will have to leave it here as we are off to London Zoo today with our great nieces. We were going in the Easter holidays but the weather was awful, I’m not sure it will be much better today but the rain macs are packed (I won them in a competition last year, just as we had got back from Costa Rica, where we could certainly have done with them!)

This week’s photo, both my amazing, huge and beautiful Cuban Gold tarantulas moulted into males this week. I could not believe it (see I don’t sex tarantulas, I’m not lying), I was sure they were adult females, I would be embarrassed to tell you how long I have had them. It was so disappointing, I even had it on my shopping list to look for a male at the BTS show. I’m so glad I didn’t find one! Thankfully I have already sold one as an exhibition animal, I will be sending him off on Monday. Male tarantulas don’t live as long as females but they are often far more impressive and generally far more active too. The sad thing for me is that it means I won’t get to breed them and they are worth considerably less. I will update you all on my tarantula breeding next week.

I haven’t forgotten the Monthly Review competition but simply couldn’t find time to draw it yet, I will draw it at the weekend and post the results on Facebook.