Monthly Archives: May 2015

My wife and I don’t watch a lot of television, mostly because we just don’t have the time, but we’re fond of shows we can run in the background while working on other things. We both have our favorites (mine is mostly because the damn show keeps recreating our conversations, as well as our relationships with our pets), but the Czarina recently became a Rehab Addict enthusiast. I can understand, and not only because we Michigan kids need to stick together. A lot of the appeal comes from host Nicole Curtis’s attitude: she’s renovating houses, but not just to flip them, and she’s very big on restoring houses to bring out the best without making them just like everyone else’s. I can sympathize, which is why I have a back porch as full of glassware as her basement is full of spare windows and doors. Want to know a secret? I get an especial thrill at shows after having found a beautiful glass container at an estate sale, having the Czarina question my sanity for buying it, and then having someone at the next show lose their minds over finding just the right plant in just the right container. At Frightmare this year, we had a LOT of that.

One of the greater thrills of loading tables at Texas Frightmare Weekend isn’t just in the expression of new attendees when they see something they aren’t expecting. The better thrill is seeing longtime attendees, who remember the early days of Frightmare from personal experience, who specifically look for the booth to see what I brought out this time. 2015 was a fair mix of both, which helps explain why this was the largest attendance yet. It wasn’t just a matter of explaining to newbies what I was doing, nor greeting longtimers who wanted to expand their collections. It was barely constrained chaos on all three days, and I can’t thank my booth assistant Nikki enough for her help. Without her ability to be in four places at once, we’d never be able to keep up with all of the people and their (to an individual, very good) questions.

Half of the fun of experimentation comes from seeing the looks on the faces of those receiving the results. Over the last summer, I’d conducted many experiments with raising Venus flytraps in open-mouthed glass globes in typical Texas conditions, and had this monstrous globe as a demonstration for a presentation at the Perot Museum in April. It held four different cultivars: a typical flytrap, a Red Dragon, a Cupped Trap, and a B-52, one of the largest flytrap cultivars ever developed. Show it to a couple who really wanted to try a flytrap again, after learning that one never waters with Dallas municipal water if one wants a live flytrap, and I learned one valuable lesson. Namely, I need to make up more of these.

Oh, and have I done a shoutout for the staff at Texas Frightmare Weekend and the staff at the Hyatt Regency DFW? I’ve been a vendor and a guest at a lot of conventions over the decades, and I say without reservation that Frightmre staffers are some of the greatest people I’ve ever worked with. I’ll say that double for the staff at the Hyatt: I’ve never seen hotel staff at a convention have this much fun before, and I was glad to return the favor by bringing doughnuts for both on Sunday morning. (And for those staffers wondering where the doughnuts came from: Donut King in Garland. Good folks, all the way around.)

A full year between shows should be enough to prepare, he said. Getting a greenhouse restocked and full of new plants shouldn’t be that much trouble, he said. This was before dealing with last-minute insanity with an old Day Job, getting an offer on a new Day Job, and seeing the start of what is officially the wettest May in Dallas history. Even with the number of eleventh-hour obstacles, the Texas Triffid Ranch opened its sixth show at Texas Frightmare Weekend on May 1 with a minimum of drama and a surplus of enjoyment. No matter how trying the weeks leading up to it, the attendees and crew at Frightmare make the trip all worth it.

Without question, this year’s Frightmare was the biggest any of us had ever seen, and the trick was preparing for it. This included an extra table, extra displays, Nikki the brand new booth assistant (who deserves a serious raise due to her exceptional presentation and sales skills), a larger truck…we joked at one point that the only way to bring out more was to turn the Made In Texas Hall into a big greenhouse, stay there the entire year, and raise plants in situ. It hasn’t gotten to that point, yet, but it’s awfully tempting.

And one thing that needs to be promoted more heavily next year. One of the side effects of running a carnivorous plant nursery is getting tips on all sorts of remainders and discounts, and making friends with the staff at a Walgreen’s meant being told “By the way, did you know that we’re marking down all of the Monster High Venus McFlytrap dolls we ordered for Christmas?” Of course, as any child of hoarders will tell you, the trick is not taking advantage of such largesse but making sure that it doesn’t take over the whole house. The idea seemed simple, as was posted all over Twitter: come out in a plant-related costume and win a free prize solely for showing up in costume. This year, we didn’t see more than one floral attendee, and she had no idea the giveaway was going on, but everyone won all the same.

More to follow…