One of the so-true-it-hurts jokes told throughout Texas is “If you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes.” Sometimes we go to extremes, such as with last October’s tornadoes tearing through Richardson and north Dallas. Most of the time, though, it’s slightly annoying, such as when, for one day, the state thermostat switched programs from “October” to “end of August.” The good news to that was that blood temperatures in October are considerably less oppressive than when the sun is on the other side of the autumnal equinox, and they come with the recognition that we’d best enjoy them while we still have them. after all, November and its torrential rains are coming, and it’s going to get cold soon enough.
Other than that, the progression through October continues through the whole of North Texas. We haven’t had any appreciable rain all month, so we probably won’t get any significant autumn foliage color this year, so Dallas will be covered with pastels in November. On the carnivore side, the remarkably mild weather caused an explosion in the Sarracenia pools, with S. leucophylla cultivars and hybrids showing their best in all of my experience of growing them in Texas. It’s also shaping up as a terrific autumn for Venus flytraps, particularly the red cultivars such as “Aki Ryu,” and after a very disappointing spring (probably set off by our remarkably warm winter), triggerplants are taking off again as well. And so it goes.
Okay, this weekend is going to be a workout. Saturday evening, the gallery reopens for its first open house in a while, running from 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm, both to show off the new renovations and to have a good sendoff for our neighbors at Visions of Venice, which is moving to Dallas’s Design District at the end of the month. We then come right back on Sunday morning for the second-to-last Sunday Porch Sale of the year, starting at 9:00 am and running until 3:00 pm, then take the day off on Monday to recuperate and get right back to it for October 25. After that, in order to remember the reason for the season, the Triffid Ranch hosts one last Porch Sale on October 31 from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm, and then then that’s it for outdoor events in 2020. Now back to getting everything ready.