Lots of sunshine, I could get used to this!
Lots of sunshine, I could get used to this! Sorry if the weather where you are hasn't been quite so good but High Wycombe has been basking in sunshine all week. I'm not missing the usual April showers one bit. Everything in the garden is growing, no more visiting the Homebase car park for bramble thank goodness. My new 'very expensive' Rhinoceros cockroaches are doing well. I was told to keep them on damp sand with dry leaves on top, they are all still mooching around ok. I really need to do a Google search, I have been told that they eat mostly dried Eucalyptus leaves. I have given them various leaves including Eucalyptus but just to be on the safe side I have also given them my usual cockroach mix.
I have an awful lot of spiderlings at the moment, some are in together and therefore need separating out or I will end up with a few fat ones. I made a bit of a mistake this week when I bought in a batch of spiderlings and accidently put them into a tank where there were still a few baboon spiderlings. I think I have all of the larger ones removed now but I can't be totally sure as the baboon spiders dig down and hide in the substrate. I'm not sure how many of the smaller spiderlings I have lost, time will tell. They were rather expensive food!
Royal Mail have been hopeless this week. I sent out 7 parcels on Tuesday and only 4 arrived the next day. The bugs were all fine but when I visited the post office yesterday to claim my postage back I was told that the Special Delivery next day guarantee had been suspended due to the volcanic ash situation! I had not been told this when I posted the parcels and there were no notices anywhere. I looked online and there was no mention of it. I cannot see why mail to the mainland would be affected? Thankfully the airports are all up and running now so I'm sure everything will be fine by Monday.
I have had a change around with my 'notes for visitors' this week. Weekday visits are difficult as I just don't have the time to clear everything up and get things ready for people looking around the bug house. I don't mind people placing orders and picking them up at the door during the week but if somebody wants to choose their animals then Saturday is the best day. I am setting aside Saturdays when my husband is working, I have a couple of people coming over tomorrow. I'm not sure about next Saturday, although my husband is working, my mother in-law is going into hospital on Friday for her long awaited hip replacement operation. Hopefully the operation will go well and she will be out after a few days but she will initially need a lot of help from us as she lives alone. I need to tweak my 'notes to visitors' a bit more. They look rather abrupt to me but it is so difficult. My husband hates the minimum spend idea but I cannot afford the time to do all that clearing up and preparing for someone to buy a pot of fruit flies and they do! My husband favours putting 'no time wasters' (as has been suggested by many of my male customers), surely this is far more rude than a minimum spend? Perhaps I will take the minimum spend off and cross my fingers. It would be good to have a few visitors on a Saturday rather than just one or two but it has to be by appointment as I cannot run an open afternoon alone. I'm always changing things, we will see how it goes. It is nice to meet people face to face and have a chat.
Must get a move on, lots of spiderlings to feed this morning. One last thing, the Blue Tits are again nesting in the box opposite my office window. The camera is switched on, first there was a clutch of eggs and now mum is sitting on top keeping them warm. I do hope they all make it this year and I don't have to dash off to St Tiggywinkles again (mummy bird disappeared last year and I had to rescue the abandoned babies).