Just as a recap, the gallery is shut down. The keys went back to the leasing manager on March 9, and as of now , there is no plan to revive the Texas Triffid Ranch in any capacity. The site will remain live until March 2024, with decisions made about its status at that time. Likewise, all touring events have been cancelled as well. If you want to see Triffid Ranch plants, I highly recommend the carnivorous plant bog at the Dallas Arboretum: all of the remaining Sarracenia and Venus flytraps went there to live out their lives as educational plants, and I plan to visit them quite often, especially in March and April when they’re blooming. Other than that, the Texas Triffid Ranch is no more.
As for future plans, right now the biggest concern is organizing the remaining items that don’t have room in the house, and then it’s on to new projects. Anybody wanting a heads-up when these are ready might want to subscribe to the old Triffid Ranch newsletter for the update when they’re ready for public consumption. Other than that, be seeing you.
If you hadn’t heard about the greenhouse, there’s one impromptu sale this Friday and Saturday (March 3 and 4, 2023), from noon until 8:00 pm or whenever the last items leave, to move the last remaining inventory: everything is dedicated to getting the last of the stuff out of the gallery and handing over the keys on Monday. Take care of yourselves, and thank you for 12 years of safe weekends and music sharing. (And many, many thanks to Jack Bogdanski for the whole “Have a Great Weekend” concept, which I stole without remorse and with full credit.) Now back to the library: there’s so much reading to catch up on.
Okay, so the move out of the gallery was slightly delayed due to unavoidable issues last week, but the leasing manager was willing to accommodate an additional week. Several potential buyers of the few remaining enclosures just needed a few extra days to come out and pick up their purchases, they said, before they ghosted. No big deal, I thought: let’s just sell what’s left on Facebook Marketplace and maybe move a few into the greenhouse at home. As for the greenhouse itself, while the Triffid Ranch was ending, it would be perfect for raising hot peppers, vanilla orchids, and maybe the occasional Nepenthes. Not a big deal, right?
Well, somebody had other plans. The National Weather Service predicted all day the possibility of severe weather in the Dallas area, including the possibility of hurricane-force winds. Most of the time, these storms break up when heading east after they hit Fort Worth, but this one was special. First, the tornado alert sirens through Garland, Richardson, and Plano all started going off, and then the clouds rolled in. When this happens in daytime, the skies go a Coke-bottle green from atmospheric dust blown in advance of the front. This one had so much dust that the lightning strikes on the edge of the front went a brilliant peridot green, something I hadn’t seen since a similar storm in 1982. Then the wind hit.
For most storms, the greenhouse was protected both by the angle at which the storms hit and by the bulk of the house. This beast hit different, as judged by the amount of detritus and occasional roof shingle caught in the wind. The greenhouse looked as if it were going to be a little shaken but otherwise fine, and then one big gust blew off a front panel that had been well-secured with greenhouse tape just a couple of days before. That flew, and then the whole thing broke off the foundation, tumbled a bit, and attempted to chase the shingles blowing down the alley. The only thing keeping it from becoming a problem for the neighbors was a crape myrtle tree at the corner. It then crumpled and imploded on itself from the force of the wind. The crape myrtle held both the frame and the polycarbonate panels, preventing them from becoming a threat to others, until the storm finally settled a bit.
When things were safe enough for an initial inspection, it was pretty obvious that it would need a bit more than a touch of duct tape. The main structural elements were bent beyond repair, the foundation was ripped, and the whole thing was an utter loss. The only thing to do at that point was to wait until morning and see what remained.
In daylight, the damage was even worse than feared. The wreckage is going to make one of Garland’s scrap yards very happy, as it’s all perfectly good salvageable aluminum, but it’s not good for anything else. Considering that this is now the second of two catastrophic storms coming through the area, the first one being last September, and getting a new one might be folly.
But you know what? It all worked out. Had the Triffid Ranch continued and I started to get ready for the spring show season, that greenhouse would have been full of young plants at the time it tried to fly back to Oz (or, more likely based on the difficulty of the installation instructions, Lankhmar), and the loss would have been total. The cost of a greenhouse replacement would have been one additional expense on top of the gallery rent increase, and its installation would have taken time away from preparing for upcoming shows. If this was a sacrifice to the Lords of Chaos in exchange for the rest of the year being mellow and uneventful, then let them have it and their laugh.
And so it ends. No GoFundMe or small business loans to rebuild: if anything, any last-minute attempt to go back and restart the Triffid Ranch is now impossible. If you feel sympathy and want to help, come out to the gallery on Friday, March 3 and Saturday, March 4 to buy up the last fragments of Triffid Ranch inventory and make offers on the shelves and other furniture. I’ll be there both days from noon until 8:00 pm or when everything is gone. (The big workbenches out in the front are already claimed, but I still have the big Lundia and Skandia shelves that have to come down, and I’d rather have them go to good homes for someone starting their own new businesses.) And most of all, LAUGH. It can’t be that bad, right?
So that’s it. 15 years of shows, 7 1/2 years of gallery events, and it’s all wrapped up, other than the remaining pieces. I’d like to thank everyone who came out to the gallery and the Porch Sales over the better part of a decade, the people who had to crawl over the entourage up front to get to the plants, the folks who came by shows all over Texas, and everyone who just came by because they wanted to know more about carnivorous plants. You were and are appreciated and remembered, and I’ll see you when I see you.
As for blatant and shameless plugs, it’s also time to note that for those who only now came across the gallery and want to know more about carnivorous plants, the book The Savage Garden by Peter D’Amato is still essential reading, and both the original and revised editions will remain beloved and valued components of my library. I may be getting out of carnivorous plant sales, but those books give a lot of inspiration for a new project to be announced later.
As mentioned before, this is the first time I have shut down a business, and it’s going remarkably well. No investors means no phone calls, no debt means no phone calls, and now I can be very vocal as to exactly why I’m not switching the gallery wifi service to Spectrum. (I have to admit that I’ll miss Spectrum for one reason: the incessant mailings are all on a very stout plastic card stock, which both paints up well and works nicely for paneling and armor in enclosures. Fir the first time, those cards see use other than as lining recycling bins.) The only calls right now are for the last vestiges of plants and fixtures, and all of that should end by the weekend.
The only issue so far with the move is discovering how many items purchased for the gallery are duplicated at home. Glasses, refrigerators, microwaves, spare towels…a lot of the items that could have been salvaged from the gallery’s closing are ones I had to purchase in the last year. Well, the local thrift stores, and friends who frequent them, are going to be happy.
To date, I have never run a business before the Triffid Ranch started back in 2008, and this is the first time I’ve had to shut one down. For the record, there’s nothing wrong with shutting down a business when conditions make keeping it open impossible: far too many businesses drag on when the person or people in charge attach too much of their identity to its continued operation. If it’s at all possible, it’s much better to shut down at a good time, rather than when forced to do so, and this couldn’t have been a better time. The weather was wonderful, the parking not too crowded out by the obnoxious neighbors at the end of the block, and the event itself wasn’t opposite some major Dallas event. Just imagine the fun of trying to do all of this in the middle of July in Dallas.
As mentioned before, there’s still a little left (and currently available for purchase), but the best liquidation sales are the ones where everyone goes home happy. Yes, it’s a bit sad watching the last bit of 15 years of work go out the door, but that just frees things for the next project, and you’re going to love it when it gets announced.
6 years after moving to the current location, and now it’s time to leave. Aside from the fixtures and a few remaining plants (and everything remaining is for sale), the Texas Triffid Ranch has finished its run. Considering the general life expectancy of art galleries in Dallas, it was an extraordinary run, but all things end, and it’s time for Dallas’s pretty much only carnivorous plant gallery to close the door forever.
The good news with the last liquidation sale is that the Triffid Ranch will be missed by many, but I promise that their aim will improve. The weekend was a nearly-neverending parade of longtime regulars, old cohorts and friends from Texas Frightmare Weekend, and a lot of folks who had no idea the gallery existed a week earlier. (So much for all of the advertising efforts over the last three-quarters of a decade.) It was an absolute blast and something that I wish could have run for a lot longer, but time’s run out and it’s time to move on.
