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Monthly Archives: March 2013
Unorthodox Gardening Tools – 5
In most gardening applications, I can think of two circumstances where having long manipulative tools narrower than one’s fingers come in very handy. (Well, I can think of a third, but most gardeners I know skip out on pliers for pulling out bullets and go straight for the cauterizing oil. It makes a better scar.) The first is working with terraria, either with plants a little too delicate for mere fingers or with glass containers that don’t respond well to shaking and beating. The other is any application with cacti, chollas, or other succulents with barbed spines. You might say “the flesh is weak”, and I’ll agree with you, especially after encountering the joys of Joshua Tree chollas.
(For those unfamiliar with these uniquely North American nightmares, chollas reproduce both by seeds and by chunks of their branches rooting where they land. They often land far from their original locales because the plant is covered with sharp and barbed spines that sink into exposed flesh and lodge themselves. If you try to pluck off a chunk, you discover that they make a finger trap worthy of Clive Barker, as the force necessary to grasp the chunk is also enough to sink the hooks on the chunk into the offending hand. Gloves are also equally attractive, and the only effective way to remove a cholla chunk is to use metal barbecue tongs to grip and pull before tossing the chunk well out of range.)
In addition to standard gripping, there’s another consideration involving trimming overgrown or dead material from plants in a bottle terrarium. It’s not enough to snag something, but to cut it as well. I’ve seen terrarium guides from the 1970s that suggest all sorts of handmade tools utilizing wine corks and razor blades on clothes hanger wire, but when it comes to delicacy and strength, nothing beats implements designed to invade the human body and remove pieces from inside.
This is why I tell all of my gardener friends to learn of the wonders of American Science & Surplus and refer to AS&S often for unorthodox tools. For friends outside of the States, since AS&S can’t ship outside of the US, I tell them to make more friends out here and work out a trade program, because you can’t tell what AS&S has available on any given day. In this case, go directly to the Medical/Dental Tools section of the AS&S catalog, because about two-thirds of the items therein can come in handy. Most of the time, you’ll come across something that you didn’t realize existed and that you didn’t know you needed until you spotted it.
Since AS&S gets a lot of surplus medical tools, it has an excess of riches most days, including scalpels, syringes, hemostats, bandage scissors, and all sorts of things with uses that transfer well to horticulture. This is in addition to the lab glassware. The middle tong in the photo above is an alligator forceps: open and close the handles, and a tiny little jaw opens at the other end to grab and drop items. Of more import is the tool on the bottom, designed for arthroscopic surgery. This has a lower jaw with a beveled slot in it and an upper jaw that fits inside that slot, so when you close it, whatever gets caught is both grabbed and cut. In situations where you need to remove dead leaves on a miniature sundew without disturbing the plant or getting mucilage all over your hands, that tool is an absolute lifesaver.
Micro-tools are great, but as anyone who has ever tried to paint a cabinet with a 3/0 brush will tell you, sometimes a larger tool gets better results. That’s why when I came across an Alligetter on discount, I snagged it. The Container Store originally sold it as a handy device for pulling items out of garbage disposals, which explains the little LED, battery pack, and switch on the top of the device, but I snagged it on deep discount because the LED wasn’t functional. Not that it matters in most gardening circumstances. The trigger grip allows good control, the plastic jaws are just flexible enough to grip without crushing, and the jaws are wide enough to grab larger items in enclosed spaces than what the alligator forceps can snag. If you need something for larger items than what an Alligetter can manage, might I recommend barbecue tongs? I understand they work well with cholla removal.
Still more to come…
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Posted in I'm living in my own private Tanelorn
Unorthodox Gardening Tools – 4
Spend a few years gardening, and you’ll note how necessary metal wire is for most applications. If you want something to last more than a year or so, you’ll need wire. The garden twine used to tie back roses or tie up tomatoes might last a year under most weather conditions. I’ve known people, including my mother, to use flexible plastic oxygen tubing for tying up climbing roses to a trellis, but the Texas sun leaves that yellowed and brittle within a year. Even with UV inhibitors incorporated into the mix, most plastics only survive for a few years, so even big pots eventually go brittle as their plasticizers outgas and sunlight breaks down the resin’s chemical bonds. If most house and car paint starts to powder and fade within five years, what chance does a Zip-tie have?
(When I was still in high school, my little brother had a 1973 Chevy Vega as his first car. My father purchased it from a friend for $25, after the car responded to a whole new engine rebuild by dropping the transmission, and that friend’s son had painted the beast blue with white racing stripes. He did a great job with the masking, but he didn’t seal the paint, and two or three Dallas summers left it a bit, erm, permeable. In fact, every rainstorm left a line of blue milky water running down the street from where the Vega sat, and trying to wash that beast was an exercise in Sissyphean futility. Even so, that beat the experience we both grew up with further north, where the sun was less intense but road salt during the winters ate out the body panels and left monstrous gaping holes in the floorboards. That Vega finally died not from the paint job, but from scratches in the paint after my brother moved to Wisconsin, and it rusted to pieces within a year of its getting there.)
Of course, wire isn’t a perfect replacement for plastic. Metal fatigue. Excellent transmission of heat and/or electricity. A tensile strength much higher than that of flesh. And, of course, when dealing with puncture wounds caused by a piece of rose tying wire or the wire often used to tie off bales of long-fiber sphagnum moss, there’s always the fun to be had from tasty, tasty tetanus. I mean, why let a little rictus sardonicus get in the way of horticultural glory? Just walk it off.
Seriously, considering all of the sharp and flexible items found in gardening areas, I’m amazed that half of my blood isn’t tetanus booster by now. Consider old rusty nails sticking out of old fencing. More nails dropped to the ground during house construction and forgotten. Insulation staples and brads dropped under the same circumstances. I won’t even start with the amount of ferrous and oxidized treasure tossed into fill dirt used for raised beds or yard grading, all loaded with bacteria left over from the days when oxygen was a deadly waste product. In a lot of those cases, removing the nightmare entirely may be impossible, so you spend your time cutting, filing, and hammering until the obstacle is no longer a threat to children or pets.
This is why every gardening toolkit needs a set of pliers and trimmers. A Leatherman at your side at all times is great, and I implore everyone looking at a cheap knockoff to consider that you get your money’s worth, but sometimes it’s not enough. Hence, alongside mine and my trusty Swiss Army Explorer knife, I recommend getting a set of specialized pliers for those special jobs. They’re usually not expensive (I bought the set of grey-handled long-reach pliers for $20 US), and the first time you need to twist wire, open up split rings, or cut something flush with a wall in a space a hacksaw can’t reach, you’ll thank yourself for snagging the set.
More to come…
Unorthodox Gardening Tools – 3
I don’t care what anybody says. Any decent gardening toolkit needs brushes and scrubbers. Scotchbrite pads are great, too, but basic brushes, whiskbrooms, and bottle brushes are essential. Whether you’re trying to check for new growth on a corm without disrupting the roots, cleaning off a mold-encrusted pot, or trying to get that scrap of moss off the inside of a bottle terrarium, a decent selection of brushes will save your sanity in the long run.
And so, starting from the left, we have a standard soft-bristle whisk broom given to me by my father-in-law, used mostly for sweeping up messes. Whether it’s the cat knocking a pot over or your beloved shoving a table and inadvertently smashing a vase, having a good basic broom for gathering debris will save your hands. Oh, it might be dust, but do you really want to sweep up glass fragments with your fingers, too?
To the right of that is a standard bonsai brush, designed for brushing and evening the soil in bonsai trays. It works beautifully for that, but it’s also very effective for dust on glasswork, rust on metalwork, and shooing the cats.
The next two are scrubbers, which get used in gardening more than you think. In particular, the potato scrubber is your friend when washing out pots or other containers, and the combination of accumulated filth and minerals from the local tap water make a crust impermeable to everything other than atomic weaponry. Oh, and if you’re growing potatoes, that scrubber means you can wash your bounty under the garden hose and throw it on the grill right then, too.
Finally, we have the specialist tools. On the far right is a toothbrush, if you have a thing for worrying about the tartar on a Thylacosmilus. Besides its normal use in cleaning Army latrines in Basic Training, the other side can be sharpened and beveled as a scraper and used for chipping off extremely hard mineral deposits from glass without scratching it. The last one, the bottle brush, is the most used of the lot: have you ever tried to clean out test tubes, bud vases, clear plastic tubing, or a sink drain with a rag on a stick? If you have, then you understand why anyone who takes your bottle brush must DIE.
More to follow…
Unorthodox gardening tools -2
Anyone doing so much as basic gardening needs a cutting edge sooner or later. Sure, you can pluck roses by hand, but at the risk of either tearing up your hand or tearing up the plant. Everyone has a story about a beloved plant that was either ripped up or ripped out of the ground because the plant’s bond to a dead leaf was stronger than its bond to the earth. When working with many carnivorous plants, a sharp edge is essential, as both Nepenthes tendrils and Sarracenia leaves are tougher than comparable hemp rope. If you think I’m kidding, go ahead and take off those dead leaves by hand. I’ll be over here, laughing.
The problem with unorthodox projects is that sometimes unorthodox tools are needed, and that particularly applies to cutting implements. A good pair of scissors or secateurs gets the job done 99 times out of a hundred. It’s the odd circumstance, though, that requires a bit of variety, which is why I have several additions in the basic toolbag.
The pair of hand clippers in the center is self-evident, although these see regular use because they’re small enough to fit into a pocket. Continue to use big scissors or clippers, to be sure, but don’t be afraid to get a small pair like these, with spring action so they open when you release pressure on them, for the really small jobs.
Now, the blades on the left are watch knives, designed to be used by jewelers for opening watch backs. The Czarina uses these constantly for watch battery replacement, as they have one side that’s beveled and the other is perfectly flat, with a good stainless steel blade that’s easily resharpened. While they’re best for circumstances where you need to pry while cutting, thus immediately making them much safer than your pair of garden scissors, that flat side means that they’re also very handy for prying up glue, epoxy, silicone sealer, or just about anything on an impermeable surface that needs to be removed with a minimum of damage to that surface. Just don’t use them for opening paint cans, and they’ll last forever.
Over on the right are the real specialist tools. Both of these are budding knives, used for T-bud grafting buds and twigs to parent trees. The bottom of the blade cuts through bark in order to start the graft, while the flange on the top allows you to pull up the bark and the cambium, very gently, to slip in the graft material before tying or taping it down. The jackknife version is one manufactured by Victorinox, the Swiss Army knife manufacturers, as a budding and garden knife, and is still available at a reasonable price. The one on the far right was a surprise discovery at an estate sale, with a rosewood handle, that suggests the owner was using it for elaborate grafting experiments. Either way, they’ve been getting a bit of a workout on my grapefruit tree, and should last for decades even with that.
As mentioned before, more to come…
Unorthodox gardening tools – 1
Over the last weekend, I spent a very productive evening trimming back and wiring yearling Capsicum peppers for bonsai. In the process, I went digging through the big toolbag I use for holding my gardening tools and realized “You know, if someone didn’t know me, they’d have all sorts of suspicions about what I planned to do with the stuff in here. Hell, they’d have those suspicions if they did know me.” Ten years of serious horticulture, combined with a packrat mindset for tools that comes from my father’s side of the family, and most of the tools in my collection would make for props in one hell of a PBS series.
It’s worse when I bring these out at plant shows, ostensibly to pluck a dead leaf from a terrarium arrangement or prune back a recalcitrant weed that escaped notice until right then. Between the tools themselves and the heavy bag I use to haul them around, I have to explain that no, I’m not doing Harry Tuttle cosplay. When your father is an engineer, it comes with the territory.
With that in mind, it occurred to me after talking with friends that some of these tools, handmade and otherwise, might be handy to other horticulturalists as well. If it works, feel free to track down your own, or make your own, for that matter. Half of the fun is the sharing.
The first unorthodox tool is a bit too large to fit into the bag, but it’s a lifesaver for trimming plants in pots, arranging miniature gardens, or otherwise handling containers that need to spin a bit. Professional bonsai growers use turntables made specifically for the purpose, and there’s nothing wrong with these in the slightest. However, when working with smaller arrangements, I needed something with that flexibility, but lightweight enough to be carried around easily, and with a storage space underneath. Some have these, but the price is a bit iffy.
Thankfully, the detritus from the dotcom era left very affordable and usable alternatives. Every morning when I look at the flatscreen monitor on my work computer, I note that while it’s over six years old, it’s still better than the CRT monstrosity I used to have. Back when cathode ray tubes were the only options for computer monitors, the more showy had their beige monitors and their beige desktops accented with equally beige monitor stands, and those stands were designed to handle a lot more weight than is needed today. Hence, they show up in charity shops on a regular basis, and they’re perfect for miniature garden work. Adjust the wingnut to the proper tension, cover the assemblage with a waterproof cover, set your pot in the center, and spin away. Even better, if it wears out, replacement parts are easy to obtain, and you can even touch it up with a touch of paint to get rid of that Nineties-era beige and make it easier to wipe off after a repotting session.
And that’s the start of it. Keep checking back for more.
Introducing Sarracenia flava
The joke all throughout Texas goes “Don’t like the weather? Hang around for five minutes.” Our reality isn’t much better. While not getting the rain we were promised (as of this week, we’re now facing the driest spring registered in North Texas since 1971, and we’re heading straight toward Year Three of the worst drought seen in the state since the “drought of record” in 1952-56), Saturday was average for the area and the time of the year. Then Sunday hit, and it’s time to pull out the winter coats and gloves again. By Monday and Tuesday, we faced low temperatures below freezing, which isn’t a big deal further north, but here? I’ve lived here for two-thirds of my life, and I apparently missed our last big late freeze in 1997 by being trapped in Portland, Oregon at the time.
Anyway, the cold coming through so late in the year couldn’t have hit at a worse time. The plans to set up the new greenhouse went into standby, as the winds on Sunday were ferocious enough that attempting to install greenhouse film would have whisked me to Oz or at least to Nehwon. The citrus trees and the new blueberry, recently purchased to replace the “Pink Lemonade” blueberry bush that died during last year’s fall immolation, went under cover, as did all of the hot pepper bonsai just trimmed and wired. I couldn’t do much for the Sarracenia in their wading pools except trust in their ability to handle light frosts, but I pulled in two yellow pitchers, Sarracenia flava>, inside to protect their new blooms.
Early spring isn’t a good time for control freak carnivorous plant enthusiasts, particularly those engrossed in Sarracenia. As mentioned elsewhere, all of the North American pitcher plants go into dormancy by mid-November, and we got enough cold, including our freak snowfall on Christmas Day, to kill off most of the autumn pitchers by mid-January. That’s not a problem, because come March, they grow more. What to do about the scraggly mess hiding the blooms, though?
At this point, the best thing to do is cut off anything that’s gone brown and evaluate any new growth, as well as remove weeds that sprouted up at the same time. In this photo, you may note that this S. flava still has a kindasorta live trap from last year, even if the top is burned off, and two new tall pitchers starting to sprout. If you’re trimming yours back, leave anything that’s still green attached to the plant, especially this time of the year. The plant needs every last photon it can capture to get a good start on the year, so as tempting as it is to snip those half-traps, leave them on until they actually die off.
While giving these guys their new spring tonsorials, taking the time to go through it carefully has its reward. Hidden among the wreckage wasn’t just a tiny little pitcher that emerged at about the time the plant bloomed, but a handful of violets sprouting in the sphagnum moss. The pitcher was interesting in its own right: because most of the pollinators for Sarracenia are also potential prey, most plants bloom and only start opening up traps after the blooms fade. This little pitcher, though, was probably working hard at catching mosquitoes, fungus gnats, and anything else it could snag, passing on what nitrogen it could from digestion to the main plant while the main pitchers started to emerge. It stays, but unfortunately the violets are going to go…probably into a bog garden arrangement. The flowers don’t last long, but the leaves have their own merits if they don’t burn off in the summer heat.
Speaking of blooms, the only thing more impressive than Sarracenia traps are their blooms, and this one helps explain why the common name is “yellow pitcher”. The traps tend toward chartreuse, but the blooms just blaze. In the years I’ve kept Sarracenia, I’ve noticed these blooms ranging from canary to a very light green. The scent tends to be a bit like cat spray, which can be a bit overpowering in enclosed areas, and I’ve heard of problems with cats assuming that the analogue is the real thing and attacking bog gardens for that reason. These, though, were all completely odor-free, but I’m not sure if that was because of the bloom or the insane lack of humidity in the area at the time. However, look at them under ultraviolet light, or even under a good full moon, and get a good idea of what a pollinating insect sees.
When most people see Sarracenia blooms, the understandable concern is that the plant traps bees, wasps, and other big potential pollinators. As mentioned earlier, the plant produces its first traps after the blooms open, to remove the risk of snagging a freshly pollen-covered wasp and thereby preventing its genes from passing on to new generations. The bloom is a trap all on its own, though, but not a fatal one. The bottom cap or shield seen in this photo protects the flower’s stamens from rain and wind, and the only way in is through slots in the cap. Those caps are covered by the petals, which are about as strong and stiff as cling wrap or chunks of burst balloon, so an insect seeking nectar or pollen can push the petals aside and get in under the cap. Problem is, the petals also conceal the slots once the bug is inside, so it tends to wander around for a while, getting dusted with pollen both from the stamens above it and with loose pollen within the cap. I’ve seen honeybees escape a cap that were absolutely antiqued with fresh pollen, and there’s enough in an individual cap to expedite the pollination of a whole stand of pitcher plants.
Eventually, the fun ends. When the flower finally gets pollinated, the petals drop off, other insects wipe up the excess pollen, and the seed pod in the interior swells, matures, and then dries out. By the end of summer, I gather the mature pods, stratify them in the refrigerator over the winter, and then pot them in fresh sphagnum moss in spring. And the cycle continues.
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Tagged introductions, Sarracenia, Sarracenia flava, winter dormancy
Introducing Cercis canadensis
26 years ago, I was in a rather bad place. I was stuck in a dead-end groundskeeping job at a now-long-dead Texas Instruments site, where I had the option of paying rent or buying food but not both at the same time. In an attempt to get into a better situation, I moved at the end of February 1987 to a much more amenable apartment, without considering that moving, in the short term, can cost even more than staying put. Hence, I was beyond broke, forcing myself to go to work with levels of willpower that should qualify me for a Green Lantern ring one of these days. In fact, the only thing that kept me going for the first month of spring was that the new apartment’s porch overlooked Carrollton’s Greenbelt Park, and that park was full of huge redbud trees.
Although ranging through most of North America (hence the Latin name Cercis canadensis), redbuds are as much of a part of Texas as armadillos and mesquite. When I first moved here, the common advice given to new gardeners was to wait until the redbuds bloomed before planting anything freeze-sensitive, because they only exploded when we were reasonably safe from killer frosts. (That wisdom may be challenged this weekend, by the way, but seeing as how we last saw a late killer frost in 1997, we’re overdue.) For about two weeks, their blooms brighten otherwise stark woods and parks, to be replaced with pear, peach, and crabapple blooms as they sprout leaves. For the rest of the year, they’re curious ornamental trees, bearing big heart-shaped leaves and seed pods that resemble nothing so much as snow peas. They don’t get overly big, they don’t choke out other trees, they offer sporadic but reasonable shade, and they thrive on the poor soils that are practically a North Texas trademark.
Those seed pods, by the way, not only give away their heritage, as redbuds are woody members of the pea family. They also give a hint on edibility. Specifically, while the seed pods are tough and stringy, the flowers are not only edible but tasty if you like snow peas. Pluck them after they open, preferably after a rainstorm so they’ve been washed of dust (instead of washed in dust, the way this spring has been going), and eat them raw. The Czarina is particularly fond of garnishing salads with them, and as soon as she can figure out how to preserve them without their turning to mush, I expect to come home one evening and find the freezer stockpiled with fresh-frozen redbud blooms.
I’d be remiss in not mentioning that if you plan to get a redbud tree, do so NOW. Various cultivars exist, mostly ranging in bloom intensity between light pink and a deep pomegranate, and it’s impossible to tell the difference between them when they’re not blooming. Likewise, when they stop blooming, they tend to blend in with other trees, so unless your powers of botanical identification are fully operational, you’ll walk by even fully mature trees in scrub woodlands. The trick is to get them now, so that they’re fully established for next spring’s fireworks, and let them grow a bit into a decent shape.
As for bonsai possibilities, don’t ask me. Yet. One of these days, though…
Personal interlude: Outliving Lovecraft
As of today, I’ve hit an interesting milestone, one that I never thought I’d reach when I was in my twenties. Right now, I’ve outlived the quintessential horror writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Part of the reason for keeping up with this minutiae lies with joking that only writers, and science fiction/fantasy/horror writers in particular, can get away with dying in their late forties and still dying “tragically young”. Another reason is that considering the vile garbage I wrote back in my own writing days, every day I saw past my 28th birthday was more of a surprise to me than anyone else. The biggest reason, though, is that my plans for fame and world conquest involve doing something now, instead of waiting for it to come to me thirty years after my death. (Can you imagine what HPL would have done with the royalties off the movie adaptations of Re-Animator or From Beyond, much less all of the stuffed “Cuddly Cthulhu” figures out there?)
In the meantime, it’s back to the linen mines, what with setting up new arrangements for Texas Frightmare Weekend and getting a whole new load of seedlings established by then. Howard Lovecraft was a distant relation, so if I follow any of his traits, it won’t be his rampant racism or his unwillingness to take care of himself. Encouraging a sense of cosmic wonder, though: that’s a laudable tradition to continue.
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I’m living in my own private Tanelorn: Tax Day
Here in the US, our Tax Day is April 15, and the Czarina and I are glad to have ours done and out a month early. State sales taxes are due next month, and I already have that under control, too. However, I found myself quoting Dylan Moran quite a bit while getting everything in order.
For those unfamiliar with this scenario, this scene comes from the first episode of the brilliant Britcom Black Books, starring Dylan Moran, Tamsin Grieg, and Nepenthes namesake Bill Bailey. In particular, anybody who has ever worked in a bookstore or comic shop can appreciate the basic premise: in my case, I worked for the comics industry equivalent of Bernard Black when I lived in Wisconsin in 1986.
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Hints of spring
Officially, the first day of spring starts tomorrow. By most accounts, spring in North Texas started last weekend, as the annual display of beer vomit and beastly behavior known as the Greenville Avenue St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Dallas mixed Irish stereotypes with alcohol poisoning in what were absolutely joyous outdoor temperatures. Try telling that to local weather patterns, though: we’ll be pushing near-freezing temperatures by the weekend, and we still have two weeks before any last-minute frost breaks records.
On the local wildflower and tree bloom department, we’re still just starting out, with local bluebonnets just starting to emerge and a disconcerting number of trees still bare of so much as a sprig of green. In the meantime, though, have a flowering dogwood. Between these and the local blooming magnolias, this touch of early angiosperms gives you an idea of what spring might have been like in the early Cretaceous.
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Posted in I'm living in my own private Tanelorn
Tagged dogwood, false spring
Have A Great Weekend
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Posted in Have A Great Weekend
Tagged Ego Likeness, have a great weekend
Have A Great Weekend
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Posted in Have A Great Weekend
Tagged Ego Likeness, have a great weekend
All-Con 2013: The Aftermath – 6
The important thing to remember about All-Con 2013 is that All-Con started out as a costuming convention, and it remains true to its charter. This means that an awful lot of intensely talented pro and semi-pro costumers come out and show off. This made for an interesting show from the other side of the register, because how could you be bored when this wide a community of wonderfully crazy people came by to ask questions about carnivorous plants?
(I will, however, add an observation. All-Con had quite a few women attending dressed as the Batman villain Poison Ivy, and every last one seemed to be creeped out by the mere presence of carnivores. Please don’t ask me why.)
I’d also like to point out that this wasn’t just an event for single people, or even couples. Sometimes the whole family got in on a day trip, and went home with a Venus flytrap.
Back when the Green Lantern movie came out, my biggest complaint was “nowhere near enough Guy Gardner in it.” Thankfully, All-Con compensated for the movie’s deficits.
And then there’s slightly uncomfortable. I mean, which is worse: the customer eating the plant, or the plant eating the customer?
And that’s it for now. The Czarina and I are already signed up for All-Con 2014, which not only moves to the end of local Spring Break Week, but also extends to four days starting next year. Considering the increasing sophistication of Triffid Ranch customers, that means I’m really going to need some big surprises. In the meantime, see all of you at Texas Frightmare Weekend in May, and at FenCon X in October.
All-Con 2013: The Aftermath – 2
No matter the location in a particular venue, not everything is perfect. While the Triffid Ranch booth at All-Con 2013 was in otherwise a perfect location, right next to one of the main doors leading to the main hotel hallway, said hallway was lit by a huge east-facing window. Combine that with my miserable photographic skills, well, I had to adapt.
As always, half of the fun of attending All-Con was making friends with new vendors and saying hello to old cohorts. This meant, of course, that Tiffany of Roll2Play came by to snag more plants for her store. You know, one of these days, I’m just going to make a huge Nepenthes tank conversion for said store, just so she can get a more intense carnivorous plant fix.
And this gentleman? He was part of the crew immediately behind us, both showing off ear toggle jewelry and a new prototype 3-D printer, and word leaked out that Saturday was his 23rd birthday. Seeing as how my own 23rd year was one of the most intense in my life (among other things, I have to thank one guy I first met shortly before my birthday for introducing me to the Czarina several years later), how could I let him go without giving him his own spoonleaf sundew? Happy birthday, dude, and from a guy twice your age, I hope the next 23 years are as good as Saturday was.
All-Con 2013: The Aftermath – 1
With the booth stripped down, the cover sheets washed to remove incriminating evidence, the plants put back to bed, and the show equipment all lying in a big pile in the living room to annoy the Czarina, All-Con 2013 ended as it began. Namely, with an immense sense of self-satisfaction. All-Con isn’t as big a Triffid Ranch show as, say, Texas Frightmare Weekend, but any show where the local fire marshal insists that no more people can fit into the hotel by any technique other than pureeing qualifies as a big one. The best endorsement of the shenanigans out here: as of this time next year, I have been attending science fiction and media conventions of all sorts for thirty years, as an attendee, a guest and lecturer, and as a vendor. Maybe it was due to the number of high school and college students getting an early start on Spring Break celebrations, but this had to have been the most enthusiastic crowd I’ve seen at a Dallas convention since 1985. And since that show involved, among others, a soon-to-be-defunct hotel where convention participants were firing model rockets armed with explosive warheads from a handmade rocket launcher into the swimming pool, I’m glad that this one was much less rambunctious.
Since All-Con coincides with the bare stirrings of most temperate carnivorous plants from their winter dormancy, a lot of interesting species weren’t available this time around. To compensate were a lot of flytraps, purple pitcher plants (with a few Canadian attendees who could appreciate the provincial flower of Newfoundland and Labrador), and a few surprises. Of particular note was the popularity of my old friend Euphorbia flanaganii in a miniature garden arrangement. Yes, that Spartan can handle himself, but for how long?
Likewise, one of the best things about the wave of new attendees was being able to share very recent news about carnivorous plant physiology. Between sharing how Nepenthes ampullaria pitchers serve as frog nurseries and Nepenthes rafflesiana elongata pitchers as bat rookeries, nobody was bored.
And then we had fun with succulents. A gigantic hand-fired guacamole bowl just begs for a miniature garden arrangement with Crassula muscosa, doesn’t it?
More photos to follow: it was an interesting weekend.
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Posted in Shows
Tagged All-Con, nepenthes, shows, Texas Frightmare Weekend, things to do in Dallas when you're dead
No Sleep ’til All-Con
Apologies for the radio silence, but it’s show season, and show season means skipping out on extraneous distractions such as sleep or sanity. This weekend, the event du jour is All-Con 2013, located once again in the scenic Crown Plaza Hotel in Addison, Texas. In addition to the standard scene-chewing and name-dropping at the main table, I hope everyone attending All-Con stops by to catch the carnivorous plant lecture on Saturday night at 8:00 p.m.. In the meantime, catch you on the farside.
In related news, for about fifteen minutes, it looked as if the Triffid Ranch might be a vendor at LoneStarCon 3 in San Antonio this Labor Day weekend after all, after hearing about a major change in management at the convention. The booth rates were very good for the Czarina and myself, any excuse to visit San Antonio is a good one, and it would have been a great opportunity to say hello to old friends from my writing days, including Mark Finn, Pat Cadigan, and Guest of Honor Ellen Datlow. Sadly, while the booth rates were reasonable, the additional requirement that all vendors and helpers pay for a attending membership ($200 per head, by the way) in addition to booth fees means that this immediately turned into a show that could in no way be profitable once you tacked on transportation, accomodation, and incidental costs for the trip to and from San Antonio. And so it goes: if an old friend’s idea of putting out a bid for a Dallas/Fort Worth WorldCon goes through, though, I’m there.
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Posted in Shows
Tagged All-Con, I'm not going to the 2013 WorldCon, upcoming shows
Have A Great Weekend
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Posted in Have A Great Weekend
Tagged Ego Likeness, have a great weekend
I’m Living In My Own Private Tanelorn: Cormorants
Considering how crazy March promises to be, let’s look upon the wonders of the February just past. Namely, with photos of cormorants in the big artificial lake separating the Arlington Convention Center with whatever they’re calling the Texas Rangers ballpark this week.
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Posted in I'm living in my own private Tanelorn