Some people ask why I do so many carnivorous plant workshops at Curious Garden near White Rock Lake in Dallas. A lot of reasons present themselves: Curious Garden is the sort of store I’d want to run myself if the carnivores didn’t rule my life. Its clientele consists of the same sort of people I welcome with open arms at the gallery. It’s a short distance from the gallery. I have a lot of fun reassuring participants that many carnivores are easy to raise, and they shouldn’t be afraid to delve into carnivore culture just because that half-dead Venus flytrap purchased for them when they were five didn’t make it. All of these are valid, but that’s not the real reason.
No, the real reason I drop everything when co-owner Jason Cohen asks “Do you want to do another workshop?” is because of a decades-long debt. Nearly 30 years ago, Jason was my neighbor when we both lived in Exposition Park near Dallas’s Fair Park, and he also had to deal with me when he started a coffeeshop/bookstore in Expo Park in 1992. Since I was considerably less cultured and sedate than I am today, the current efforts are to thank him for not drowning me in the gutter out front when he had the chance. (Let’s put it this way: back then, I was chugging ginseng soda in order to mellow out and focus. You’d contemplate suffocation via gutter slime, too. I extend the same considerations to three ex-girlfriends for the same reasons.)
This time around, the emphasis was on extra-easy, so everyone went through step-by-step in learning how to set up a spoonleaf sundew (Datura spatulata) enclosure and the whys of each component. Right now, Jason and I are making plans, probably in January, for a more advanced class involving Nepenthes hybrids, and details will be available soon. After all, I still have a longstanding debt to repay.
