Category Archives: Newsletter

(The Texas Triffid Ranch Occasional Newsletter and Feedlot Clearance Sale is a regular Email newsletter, with archives available on the main TTR site at least a month after first publication. To receive the latest newsletters, please subscribe.)

Installment #22: “The New Normal”

This time of the year, most newsletters of this sort are talking about winding things down, spending time with family, and “wishing you and yours” in the hopes that the impending new Gregorian Calendar year won’t be worse than the one we’re currently escaping. While I understand the reasoning behind being silent so the beast won’t hear you (a reason why I haven’t been to a blowout New Year’s Eve party since the end of 2001; well, that and an inability to drink), and the need to stay silent on future plans so the gods don’t laugh and point, let’s talk instead about strategy, so the gods are laughing and pointing at where you were and not where you are.

At the beginning of 2020, the original plan for the Triffid Ranch was clear. The end of a 4 1/2-year job contract with a company I loathed gave a perfect opportunity to strike out and turn the gallery into a full-time affair. The plan was to alternate between regular open houses and events both inside and outside the Dallas area, with the intention of regular visits to Austin, San Antonio, Houston, and even New Orleans. The science fiction and media conventions in which the Triffid Ranch started were hitting what many of us were calling “Peak Con,” a regular phase in the fandom life cycle where too many groups started too many conventions, right at the time when their most dedicated attendees were having to skip cons every weekend to focus on career and family. However, a slew of new art-related events were opening up at that same time, and so the idea was to go through 2020 by staying really busy, getting out to potential visitors, and seeing where things went next. That whole plan blew up shortly after show season got going, when I pulled into Austin for last March’s NosferatuFest just in time to hear the announcement that the big SXSW arts and tech festival was being cancelled due to COVID-19. That’s when you pivot.

And pivot the Triffid Ranch did. As plenty of social and political analysts have noted in the last few weeks, COVID-19 didn’t crash everything directly, but widened fissures that were already there. That was definitely true for the conventions and events that were a Triffid Ranch mainstay. For instance, the science fiction convention circuit went through some massive convulsions: the big media conventions that had taken most of the oxygen over the last 15 years suddenly discovered that virtual conventions didn’t work that well for them, and the same was even more true for the increasingly inbred regional cons that kept plugging along only because the attendees had been going for decades and didn’t want to break their run. Conversely, several new virtual cons started specifically because they were tired of gatekeeping both social and financial, and proved that a huge audience existed for their interests well outside of the previously recognized fandom. Maker culture, costumers, writer’s workshops, stage makeup artists…suddenly they’re realizing that they never needed to be restricted by the dynamics of old-school conventions, which were essentially unchanged since the 1930s, and we’ll be seeing the aftershocks of this for decades.

Now, it’s great that so many people are able to benefit from the shift to online events, but that doesn’t work that well for those with physical items for sale. It’s hard not to be overwhelmed on social media with friends and strangers doing their best Jay Sherman impersonations in the hopes of reaching an audience, and many are now realizing that the old “Do you have a business card?” was a way of saying “I like this, but I don’t want to buy it now, and I want to disengage without a scene.” While virtual marketplaces and virtual dealer’s rooms might offer an alternative, there’s always the issue with customers wanting to see an item in person, the joys of shipping and handling, and the reality that there’s a huge difference between someone hyping up an item they just discovered on Instagram versus actually paying for it. And with items such as Triffid Ranch enclosures, where shipping costs are often higher than the cost of the enclosure and with no guarantee that it wouldn’t be destroyed once it left the post office, it’s just simply not an option.

The good news is that things will probably change in 2021, and not just because of the promise of effective COVID-19 vaccines. The reality is that just as how things didn’t return to the old normal after the 1918-19 flu pandemic, they won’t be returning after COVID-19 is a nasty memory. Too much has changed, too many old habits are broken forever, and too many new ones established, and the trick now is getting people into new ones. While I don’t pretend to be anything approximating a prophet on how events in the 2020s will run, I can safely say that these might be A future:

Lots of outdoor events. Outdoor events get to balance between the tribulations of weather (particularly in Texas, where sudden tornadoes and hailstorms are a very legitimate concern through most of the year) versus customers feeling safer. This will only continue after COVID-19 vaccine use has gone as far as it can: the pandemic has only accentuated knowledge of the limitations of most air conditioning and circulation systems, especially with the number of patrons refusing to follow basic mask safety.

Lots of smaller events. Even before the pandemic, big art shows and events had the limitation of crowds so big that precious few people could get to vendor booths to see what they had, much less purchase anything. Likewise, really big shows had the limitation of people leaving one booth “so I can see what else is here,” and by the time they were finished, being too tired to want to purchase anything. Based on anecdotes from customers coming by last summer’s Porch Sales, I suspect that the big move will be toward smaller events of two to 10 vendors at any one location, and attendees traveling to the ones that most intrigue them.

Lots of careful selection. As overused and misused as the word “curation” was over the last decade, making a thoughtful analysis of who is offering what will be what gets most events going through the 2020s. This doesn’t just include making sure that, say, T-shirt vendors don’t overwhelm every other vendor at an event. A vendor may have a truly unique inventory without competition at a show (*cough*), but if that same vendor is at every last show in a 100-kilometer radius, that both diminishes the vendor’s brand and the shows’ brand. This goes double for events attached to a holiday or regional tradition, where it’s oh-so-easy to overwhelm vendors and customers with sheer volume.

Much more community. Finally, the biggest shakeout is going to be in creating and maintaining events where the vendors and the customers are looked at as much more than a source of revenue. This works all ways, with vendors offering exclusives for particular customers and events, customers dragging friends and cohorts to shows just so they can see, and events that highlight vendors as attractions in their own right and not just as a way to pay for big-name stars. Some existing venues, such as Texas Frightmare Weekend, are going to become business case studies on how creating real community is an unquantifiable but essential part of running and maintaining large events. Just as how it’s much harder to maintain a 10-gallon aquarium in the long run than a 100-gallon, the successful small events are going to have to work harder at it, but the returns will more than make up for the effort.

Is this a roundabout way of saying that the Triffid Ranch has plans of its own for 2021? Maaaaaybe. The important part is to borrow a quote, “We all hang together, or we all hang separately,” and stick with it.

Other News

In carnivorous plant news, some may remember last summer’s experiments with studying carnivorous plant fluorescence with a grad student’s budget, and Dylan Sheng at Plano Carnivorous Plants has taken that work to exciting new levels. In particular, he was photographing Heliamphora pitcher plant fluorescence, and even noting that some species had nectar that fluoresced as well. His work had great confirmation with a new paper by Michal R. Volos on Heliamphora fluorescence in situ, helping to demonstrate that this happens with wild and captive plants. Suffice to say, keep an eye on Dylan’s future research: he’s someone to watch within the carnivorous plant community, and I’m very proud to call him a friend.

Shameless Plugs

Speaking of Texas Frightmare Weekend earlier, I’d be remiss in not mentioning that Loyd and Sue Cryer of Frightmare are now running their own horror-related storefront, Frightmare Collectibles, featuring a grand collection of autographed photos, DVDs, VHS tapes, and assorted weirdnesses gathered from around the world. Remember the mention above about outside Triffid Ranch events? Loyd and Sue recently hosted their first outdoor event by their location in Justin, Texas, and while it was far too cold this time to bring out plants, expect to see carnivores at future events once things start to warm up in spring.

Recommended Reading

Now that the holidays are nearly over, it’s time to get back to the construction side of the gallery and get to work on new enclosures, and the various books from Rinaldi Studio Press on model kit weathering and detailing are essential inspirations for those. Michael Rinaldi has spent the last few years not only mastering new weathering techniques but putting everything he can into books that focus on one single kit and show how those techniques can be applied elsewhere. While they last, I highly recommend snagging his single model volume Fish Submarine, if only for ideas and atmosphere for other artistic pursuits.

Music

The late 1990s weren’t a good time for rock music in the States, but Powerman 5000’s combination of heavy riffs with science fiction themes was a wonderful respite from the overwhelming majority of whiner rock bands from 1995 to 2000, all of which seemed required to have at least one song with the theme “Mommy Won’t Let Me Buy Heroin With Her Credit Card.” One of the statements on the general worthlessness of terrestrial radio over the last 25 years is that not only is the band still together and still producing albums, but those new albums are so much more alternative than what’s being played as such over the air. Speaking from experience, not only can you do much worse than rock out to “V Is for Vampire” when starting work at a new day job, but it’s great for keeping pace on a bike commute to the same.

(The Texas Triffid Ranch Occasional Newsletter and Feedlot Clearance Sale is a regular Email newsletter, with archives available on the main TTR site at least a month after first publication. To receive the latest newsletters, please subscribe.)

Originally published on December 18, 2019

Installment #13 “Ain’t No Cure For the Wintertime Blues, Part 2’

When last we saw our intrepid newsletter, we were discussing essential operations to keep one hale and hearty through the depths of winter. We now return to our diatribe, already in progress.

One of the great bits of fun about being in the carnivorous plant trade is that we’re always in the never-ending September. If you’re not familiar with the term, it comes from computer network sysadmins, most of whom had their first experiences on university networks and had to train a whole new audience on such basics as printing manuscripts, saving files, and turning it off and turning it back on again. 25 years ago, this hit everyone when the Internet became a diversion, a tool, and a secret addiction, and that first month of handholding turned into an all-year gig, with more people coming in as blank slates than were leaving as fully certified and experienced users. The difference is that those sysadmins looked at this as a chore. We carnivore people look at this as an opportunity, especially when that newbie we met a decade ago now surpasses our knowledge and has knowledge to return.

So many of us in the carnivore trade have tales of those mentors who helped us without expectation of return when we were first starting out. In my case, I owe debts to Peter D’Amato of California Carnivores, Jacob Farin and Jeff Dallas of Sarracenia Northwest, and Michael Wallitis of Black Jungle Terrarium Supply that I couldn’t repay in a billion years, Because of those kindnesses, it’s imperative to return the favor. Since the biggest issue after the holiday season is finding things to do to stay active when the worst of winter weather keeps you trapped inside, it’s time to share some trade secrets, pass on some abstract knowledge, and answer one overriding question asked about Triffid Ranch enclosures over and over: “just where the hell did you come up with that?” In no particular order, here are a few of my favorite sources for everything that goes with the plants:

American Science & Surplus: I have friends who live within the vicinity of American Science & Surplus outlets, full of everything from low-cost lab glassware to screaming monkey puppets, who tell me all about the fun they have loading up shopping carts full of interesting overstocks, rejects, consignments, and castoffs. I spend most nights plotting terrible revenge on them, usually involving my talking them to death. Seriously, both the print catalog and the Web site are packed with thoughtful, accurate, and very funny descriptions of the latest flotsam to come across their loading docks, and I regularly go to AS&S for everything from sculpting tools to pipe cutters to soldering stations, and a lot of details in Triffid Ranch backdrops started as something completely different spotted in the latest catalog. The only regret: AS&S can’t ship overseas, and 15 years of searching for an international resource of this scale has always led to failure. As soon as they start shipping internationally, though, you’ll know. The whole planet will know. 

Micro-Mark: It may seem odd to recommend a model kit enthusiast tool source to gardeners, but Micro-Mark is different. Very different. About half of my tools for miniature bottle gardening came from the Micro-Mark catalog or were constructed using Micro-Mark tools, and the company’s heavy-duty hot foam knife (sadly discontinued) is an essential tool used at least once per week. In addition to loads and loads of adhesives, stock styrene, sculpting and scoring tools, and more small-scale power tools than you could shake a lathe at, Micro-Mark also gets odd one-offs that you didn’t realize you needed until you needed, say, tiny heat sinks that double as tiny clamps for holding small vines in place while the glue dries. And for those of us starting to familiarize ourselves with airbrushes, the Micro-Mark catalog is dangerous.

Smooth-On: I’d recommend Smooth-On just for its exemplary moldmaking and casting components, but nowhere near enough people in horticulture and garden design, as well as those working with reptiles, amphibians, and fish, know about Smooth-On’s Habitat line of aquarium-safe freeform epoxy putty and brushable and pourable resin. Over the last three years, I’ve gone through a truly remarkable amount of the Habitat epoxy putty as an adhesive and smoothing medium, and can’t recommend it highly enough for both its versatility and its resistance to both moisture and acid soils. And the look on amphibian-addicted friends’ faces when they discover aquatic amphibian-safe aquarium media options…

Obviously, this is just a start: too many options can be dangerous. However, there’s nothing that says that further collections of dangerous visions won’t be available in the future. Keep watching the skies.

Other News
For as long as I’ve been alive, the final year of a given decade was one of transitions, usually exceedingly painful. 2019 was my very own Angry Candy year, with a lot of friends dying, including my father-in-law, and all sorts of tribulations at the end. That’s why we’re having a big open house on January 25 for Chinese New Year: one celebration to the end of a kidney stone of a year just isn’t enough.

Recommended Reading

Far be it for me to add another review of Jeff VanderMeer’s new novel Dead Astronauts to the pile, but here’s another reason to pick up a copy, help turn it into a bestseller, and facilitate the upcoming television project based both on it and its predecessor Borne. Jeff and I have been friends since my writing days in the early Nineties, and if not for his inadvertent advice to move to Tallahassee for a job in 2002 and my first encounter with Sarracenia pitcher plants on my first day there, my life would have been drastically different. Because of that, after Dead Astronauts melts your brain and causes it to dribble out your nose at the most inopportune time, you can come up to him at a signing or a Nobel Prize acceptance ceremony, throw a Triffid Ranch T-shirt at him, and yell “This is YOUR fault!” And the best part? It is.

Music

It’s been a rough few months for everyone, so I leave you with an introduction, if you’re not familiar already, with Angel Metro. Just trust me on this. Go download the latest album by whatever service you prefer, but give it a good stout listen before the next newsletter comes out.

(The Texas Triffid Ranch Occasional Newsletter and Feedlot Clearance Sale is a regular Email newsletter, with archives available on the main TTR site at least a month after first publication. To receive the latest newsletters, please subscribe.)

Originally published on November 9, 2019.

Installment #12: “Ain’t No Cure For the Wintertime Blues, Part 1”

No matter how hard we worked to keep it from happening, it’s over. No matter how hard we fought, winter is on the way to the Northern Hemisphere, and with it the dreaded holiday season. It’s worse than the flu. It’s worse than dry and overcooked turkey. It’s worse than working retail for a sadistic corporation that gets off on forcing its peons to have to listen to “Santa Baby” over and over for eight to ten hours a day. Even for those blessedly spared butter cookies and animatronic reindeer and Dawn of the Dead cosplay at the local Walmart, who avoid cable just so they don’t have to hear about the latest Hallmark Channel holiday movie, there’s one thing we can’t avoid on this half of the planet, and that’s the end of the growing season. That’s it. There’s nothing to be done other than wait four to six months for the days to get longer.

I admit that I don’t mind the concept of winter, in moderation. For the last 40 years, Texas made this so much better, and surviving the blistering summers was always so much more tolerable with the promise of winter out here. Four decades ago this month, my family made the trek from the south side of Chicago to the northern suburbs of Dallas right after Thanksgiving, and the disconnect was stunning. The end of 1979 in Chicago wasn’t promising meters of snowfall the way the year had started, but the last of the household goods went into the moving truck just as a patchy snow started as the temperature dropped below freezing, and it wasn’t the good kind of snow that could be used for snowballs and snowmen, either. This was God’s dandruff, that filled hollows in the ground and not much else, and it signaled nothing other than “it only gets worse from here.” For nearly the length of Illinois, the snow followed, with overcast skies preventing it from melting or even ablating away. You can imagine how a kid raised disturbingly close to the 45th Parallel felt about getting to Dallas about three days later and stepping out of a car on a December day without needing to put on two coats and a hat. Comparatively, the grass was still green, and nights only got chilly enough to warrant a jacket, not a full parka and boots. December in Texas? Heck, this was the end of August in northern Michigan, and when snow finally arrived about a month later, it melted off within a day. It was GLORIOUS.

(This isn’t to say that Dallas doesn’t get cold, too. December 1983 brought a week-long cold wave so bad that the Gulf of Mexico around Galveston froze for the first time in recorded history and probably the first time since the last great glacial advance, and marine biologists still pore through the breakdowns of the species and numbers of fish killed that collected in huge piles once the ice melted. A week-long freeze and ice storm in 1985 helped local authorities discover that Texas didn’t have a law against driving snowmobiles on state highways because nobody thought it was necessary. Oh, and then there’s the lowest temperature ever recorded in Dallas, all of one degree F on Christmas Eve 1989, that I remember because of the sheer thrill of moving a movie poster-sized sheet of glass down an ice-covered hill on foot, all to make sure that my then-girlfriend had her birthday present that day…and then watching that sheet crack from thermal stress when I got it inside. It’s just that this doesn’t happen often, at least compared to six months of carving lawn furniture out of blocks of frozen nitrogen in Wisconsin.)

For those of us needing green, it’s rough this time of the year. The outdoor plants are dead, dying, or pining for the fijords, and any Venus flytraps and Sarracenia pitcher plants are either in dormancy or heading toward a long winter sleep. Indoors, the plants with access to sunlight are still slowing down and prepping for the long dark. (If your plants are kept purely under artificial lights, cutting back on their photoperiods over the winter and then lengthening the number of hours they get by about mid-March won’t guarantee an enthusiastic blooming period, but it can’t hurt.) The good news is that you don’t have to stop working with plants: you just have to pivot. Some of the many things you can do now while your plants are resting: Clean your tools and pots.

Remember last summer, when you were fighting off giant tomato hornworms and swearing that you were going to clean off caterpillar ichor from your prize Felco pruners when summer was done? Now’s the time to get out all of your tools used throughout the year, along with an old towel, and set them all out on the towel. You’re going to need distractions, so don’t be afraid to pull out headphones or put something on the television that you can binge while you’re scraping caterpillar guts. (For most gardening people with Netflix, I highly recommend The Great British Baking Show; for us carnivore people, I recommend Daybreak or Lucifer.) Besides a dishtub full of warm soapy water, you should also have:

A bottle of isopropyl alcohol.
A bottle of window cleaner.
A bottle of Goo-Gone or a comparable brand of sticker and label remover (as if such a thing exists).
A bottle of hand lotion.
Spare rags AND paper towels.
At least one old toothbrush.
A bottle of light machine oil and a bottle of WD-40.
Disposable gloves of your preference. (Try to go for nitrile over latex, for reasons that will soon become obvious.)
Optional: A whetstone or sharpening stone, preferably with a fine abrasive surface.

Some of the items on the list have purposes that aren’t immediately obvious, so let’s go through them. The isopropyl alcohol and Goo-Gone are for labels, stickers, and other stick-ons that are peeling free, cracking, or otherwise getting in the way. (The isopropyl alcohol is specifically for labels that use adhesive resistant to water or ethyl alcohol This is also something handy to remember when cleaning liquor or wine bottles, by the way, because the label paper may come free with soaking in water but the adhesive won’t.) The bottle of window cleaner is for the occasional glue or glop that needs ammonia for removal. The gloves are because you really don’t want your hands soaking in isopropyl alcohol or window cleaner for long periods without some kind of protection, and the hand lotion is an additional level of protection inside the gloves. (It also makes your hands smell nice, which they definitely won’t if you’ve been bathing in Goo-Gone for an entire binge watch of Daybreak.) The reason why you want nitrile gloves instead of latex ones is that latex tends to be attacked by the light machine oil you’re going to use, and they tend to be more tolerant of the other chemicals you’re using. Finally, the light machine oil and the WD-40 are for lubrication: WD-40 is a penetrating solvent that’s incredibly good at loosening up seized or rusted metal parts, but it’s not an actual lubricant, so its use has to be followed up with light oil.

Two clarifications: the reason why the above list includes “spare rags AND paper towels” is that you’re going to come across substances, particularly label adhesives and oil, that you’re not going to want on rags that you plan to reuse or, worse, wash in your home washing machine. (If you’re the sort of monster who goes to a laundromat to wash items like this so you don’t mess up your own machine, several concert T-shirts, several dress shirts, and I are coming over to have a really long talk with your kneecaps.) Paper towels may be overused, but between washer and dryer abuse and the potential for spontaneous combustion, they’re a great way to collect glop that needs to leave the premises right then and there. However, there are cleaning and scrubbing activities that paper towels can’t handle without shredding and disintegrating, so take into account your needs.

And the sharpening stone? I know it’s hard to believe, but a disturbing number of people assume that the current sharpness of secateurs, scissors, grafting knives, hedge clippers, and lawn mower blades is what it is, with no option for improving the situation. Codswallop. Just as a cut from a sharp knife heals faster than one from a dull knife, cutting living plant material of all sorts heals faster with a sharp blade because the blade doesn’t crush or mangle the tissue at the cut. Unless you’ve really let your blades slide or you’re cutting up metal with your Felco pruners, a sharpening stone with a fine grit should handle all of your needs: I personally use an Arkansas whetstone that I purchased in the late 1980s, and still puts a precision edge on everything from scalpels to putty knives.

Okay, now that you have plenty to do, get to cleaning. You’ll need all of this ready to go by the time you get the next installment, available soon.

Other News
In other developments, the promise of stirring up the Triffid Ranch social media environment starts at the end of the year, with the shutdown of both personal Facebook account and the Triffid Ranch Facebook page. This wasn’t an easy decision, but recent changes in Facebook’s algorithm have made it impossible for people to get Page postings unless they’re boosted, and that is becoming increasingly more expensive with less of a return. If you know someone trying to keep up via Facebook who hasn’t read anything in a while, that’s why: the Twitter and Instagram accounts (both “txtriffidranch”) are staying up, but the first act of January 2020 is to shut down the Facebook account for good. (And feel free to forward this newsletter to anybody who might have an interest, because retro media is the new future. At this rate, it may be time to turn this newsletter into a zine.)

Recommended Reading

One of these days, the To Be Read pile beside my bed is going to collapse and kill me in my sleep, but that’s only because of so many choices. However, two particulars stand out: the latest Spectrum Awards collection of fantastic art (because after a quarter-century, it just keeps getting better and better), and the new book The Making of Alien, which goes into detail on the making of the classic film, including a lot of the conflicts and command decisions that almost imploded the production over and over. Both are available in oversized hardcovers, so if you don’t feel like Netflix binging, these are great distractions while cleaning your gardening tools.

Music

It’s been a rough few months for everyone, so I leave you with an introduction, if you’re not familiar already, with Angel Metro. Just trust me on this. Go download the latest album by whatever service you prefer, but give it a good stout listen before the next newsletter comes out.

(The Texas Triffid Ranch Occasional Newsletter and Feedlot Clearance Sale is a regular Email newsletter, with archives available on the main TTR site at least a month after first publication. To receive the latest newsletters, please subscribe.)

Originally published on April 24, 2019

Installment #10: “Snappy Answers To Carnivore Questions”
 
By the end of April, spring is pretty much established in North Texas. The last surprise freezes and cold snaps are two weeks in the past, and we aren’t going to see any precipitation other than rain and hail for at least another six months. The temperate carnivores are either starting or finishing with blooming, and the tropicals respond to longer daylight hours with increased growth and the occasional bloom. Here at the Triffid Ranch, show season is underway: getting to an event no longer comes with the risk of everything in the truck freezing to death, and yet we haven’t hit the traditional “swimming through pools of molten concrete” heat of summer. Since we won’t see temperatures and skies like this until at least the beginning of October, we all rush out like the characters in the Ray Bradbury story “Frost & Fire,” acting as if we are born, grow to adulthood, and die of old age within seven days.
 
Because it’s show season, and because of the current boom in Dallas-area shows, a lot of people ask a lot of questions and make a lot of statements. The vast majority of these are ones I welcome and cherish: one idle conversation with a couple of Air Force airmen turned me (and subsequently a slew of friends interested in preserving them in the wild) onto a population of Sarracenia pitcher plants on the east side of the Atchafalaya Basin in Louisiana. I’m constantly coming across improved growing methods, new techniques and technology, and fascinating new sources of everything from heat-treated flint to vacuform tables. And the questions…oh, everyone should get at least one question per week that leaves you cupping your chin and nodding “I don’t have an answer for you, but now I want to get one.”
 
Alas, while those great questions are the next best thing to a relaxing meal and 12 hours of sleep at the end of a long day at the plant table, these aren’t the only things tossed across the table. Anyone who has ever worked retail dreads that conversation from that individual who assumes that memorizing the complete dialogue to The Princess Bride or Pulp Fiction is a suitable replacement for a sense of humor, where an item at the register that doesn’t scan automatically gets a response of “Oh, I guess it’s free, then?” (The only thing worse than the dolt who laughs loudly at his own joke is the individual who’s deadly serious, especially in stores where the line to the register already runs through most of the store.) And if they don’t get a response, they keep repeating it, louder and louder, until they either get some kind of response or they flounce off, sniffing “Well, OBVIOUSLY someone doesn’t have a sense of humor.
 
The Mad magazine artist and writer Al Jaffee is probably best known for his Fold-Ins, where the inner back cover has one piece of art that has a completely different meaning when folded in half to hide the center of the illustration. However, my second-favorite feature of  his involved his “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” feature, where the reader could pick between multiple responses to a particularly dumb question. (My favorite feature always involved his Rube Goldbergesque technology solutions, such as the range of razors that used flamethrowers, neutron radiation, or contour-following microrazors that eliminated facial hair without taking out moles, pimples, or his favorite catchall phrase, “Yecch.”) One day, I may make up a set of cards to be given out to answer questions that aren’t worth the breath, but until then, here are 29 answers I want to give and one I wish I could give:
 
#1: So far as is known, there is no such thing as a man-eating plant. It’s not completely impossible, but because of a direct confrontation with the square/cube law, finding one in the future is very unlikely.
#2: No, there’s no plant that will eat your ex. I’m sure that your ex wants an answer to that very question, too.
#3: No, there’s no plant that will eat your kids. Judging by the expressions on their faces, they’re not worried about being fed to a plant, but they’re already making plans for your senior assisted living facility. I sure hope you like rats.
#4: Yes, I’ve seen the video of the Venus flytrap biting that neckbeard’s tongue.
#5: Yes, I’ve seen the video of the Venus flytrap wearing a Santa hat and beard.
#6: YES, WE’VE GOT A VIDEO.
#7: Did you know that repeatedly screaming “Feed me, Seymour!” at carnivorous plants leads to cancer of the scrotum?
#8; No, go ahead. Scream it a little louder. Just know that the tumor has to get really big before the whole scrotum can be cut or burned off, so you might want to buy a wheelbarrow in a few days.
#9: Oh, I’m sure that you’ve seen a Venus flytrap that can close so fast on your finger that it draws blood. [CITATION NEEDED}
#10: The lids on North American, Asian, and Australian pitcher plant pitchers don’t close on insects that enter the pitcher. The lids on each genus are rain guards to keep the pitcher from filling with rainwater. Once an individual pitcher opens, nothing short of scissors or a scalpel will get that lid to close again. 
#11: Oh, I’m sure that you DO know of a pitcher plant that can close its pitcher after capturing insects, and that your uncle is raising them in an undisclosed location “so his discovery won’t be stolen.” [CITATION NEEDED] Is your uncle a baron, last name of “Munchausen”?
#12: No, I’m not offended when I explain how the pitcher lid works and you wander off with your kid, telling him/her “That guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” I can only suspect that you have the same attitude toward expert advice from emergency medical techs, tax lawyers, and federal prosecutors, and that you’re going to make a large fortune by investing your 401(k) in Theranos stock.
#13: Carnivorous plants are defined by their ability to attract, capture, and digest insect and other animal prey. Please note that there’s a big difference between “attract, capture, and digest” and “control.”
#14: No, one lone Venus flytrap won’t control your housefly problem.
#15: No, one lone Venus flytrap won’t control your cockroach problem.
#16: No, one lone Venus flytrap won’t control your mosquito problem.
#17: No, one lone Venus flytrap won’t control your bedbug problem.
#18: No, one lone Venus flytrap won’t control your problem with raccoons, opossums, armadillos, fruit bats, chickens, stray dogs or cats, or kids that won’t stay out of your yard. Have you considered land mines?
#19: No, smoking Venus flytraps won’t get you high. Let your best friend Beavis test this for you if you don’t believe me.
#20: No, cannabis is not a carnivorous plant. 
#21: No, I have no interest in raising cannabis alongside the carnivores.
#22: No, there’s not “a lot of money” in raising carnivores, but that’s not why I do it.
#23: I’m actually flattered that you aren’t going to pour your retirement fund into selling carnivores because “there’s not any money in it.” Might I recommend pouring that money into Funko POP figures?
#24: Yes, I know you disapprove of anybody doing anything where “there’s not any money in it.” Might I give your kids a few helpful suggestions on senior assisted living facilities?
#25: Yes, the tags on each plant specifically states “Rainwater or distilled water ONLY.” That means that you can only water it with rainwater or distilled water in our area, because Dallas municipal water is best described as “crunchy.”
#26: No, you can’t boil tap water to make it safe for carnivores. Rainwater or distilled water.
#27: Does your bottled water read “Distilled Water” on the side? It doesn’t? Then it’s not safe for carnivores.
#28: Does your bottled water read “Spring Water” on the side? It does? Then it’s not safe for carnivores.
#29: Just because you put tap water in a bottle marked “Distilled Water” doesn’t automatically make it safe for carnivores. If educational organizations were subject to the same lemon laws as auto companies, your high school and college would have to be nuked from orbit.
#30: Wait.  You…you just made a fictional carnivorous plant reference so obscure that I haven’t come across it before. Would you like a job?

Other News

Well, some of you may have heard about the latest addition to the Triffid Ranch board of directors, but for the rest of you, you’ll find out about the new cat Simon soon enough. Yes, Alexandria finally has a chew toy of her very own to replace Leiber: the only thing aggravating about having two black cats in the house is that they both go out of their way to stalk me as I’m heading out of the house first thing in the morning. And unlike Alexandria, who is constantly amazed that my night vision is much better than that of most humans, Simon knows exactly where he can hide in deep shadow without being observed. The next few months are probably going to be full of Simon stories, as he’s a lot smarter than he lets on. Because of his habit of staring up soulfully and stage-falling at your feet, he’s already received the nickname of “Critter”: those familiar with the Clifford Simak short story “Drop Dead” will appreciate the humor.

Recommended Reading

The wait was worth it, the new Redfern Natural History book Cephalotus: The Albany Pitcher Plant is now out, and it’s no exaggeration to refer to it as the definitive guide to this oddball carnivorous plant. It’s going to come off as controversial in spots (the discussion on Cephalotus cultivars will probably set off a few bar fights), but its relatively small page count compared to other Redfern carnivorous plant volumes says more about how little Cephalotus has been studied before now. (A small note: if you want a copy, snag it NOW. Most copies were preordered, the book will not be reprinted once the current run sells out, and I suspect that the only way most people will be able to snag a copy a year from now is by staking out estate sales.)

Music

Seven words: new Hatebeak single “Birdhouse By the Cemetery“. If telling you “Hatebeak is a metal band whose lead singer is an African grey parrot” doesn’t get you to download this puppy as soon as you can, then we really don’t have anything else to discuss.

(The Texas Triffid Ranch Occasional Newsletter and Feedlot Clearance Sale is a regular Email newsletter, with archives available on the main TTR site at least a month after first publication. To receive the latest newsletters, please subscribe.)

Originally published on April 12, 2019.

You’d never know it, but garden centers and daily newspapers have a lot in common. 25 years ago, they were effective and ruthless gatekeepers for the general public, arrogant in the knowledge that they were the only game in town and you either paid their rates or went without. Now, with innumerable online resources for information and retail, independent garden centers are hanging on by the skin of their teeth the way daily newspapers are. Some are acknowledging that times have changed and that they need to cultivate new audiences before their old audiences leave forever, and others…well, others figure that if they just hold out a little longer, the calendars will all switch back to 1997, that horrible Interwebs thing will just go away and leave them alone, and all of their old clientele and sponsors will come rushing back to their rightful places. And it will, any day now. Any. Day. Now. Just you watch.
 
This all tied in with a conversation with friends about the Independent Garden Center show, a big three-day event in Chicago every August. Now, you can make jokes about how the air in Chicago in August is “too thick to breathe, too thin to waterski on,” but I’d made tentative plans to attend one of these days, just to visit Chicago for the first time since I moved from there forty years ago. Admittedly, part of the appeal was the excuse, quite popular with conference and convention regulars, that “I’ll see old friends who live near there” when you know damn well that you’ll be lucky to see the outside of the conference hotel, but I was actually enthused to see what’s going on with garden center distributors and vendors. One of these days, I hope to turn the Triffid Ranch into a full-time venue, and comparing notes with others in the field might impart wisdom that save me a lot of aggravation. And if one of the big draws at the IGC is the annual free concert by a musical act whose playlist shifted from “Classic rock” to “golden oldie” on the terrestrial radio dial in the last ten years, well, I look at that the way I look at chocolate and wine and demur with “More for everybody else.”
 
Well, that was then. Chicago friends had already related how the IGC was a bear to enter and leave, but the finale for me was the announcement that one of the keynote speakers wasn’t someone with actual horticultural  experience, but a stand-in for Rush Limbaugh whose entire schtick was alleged comedy about millennials. Now never mind the political spectrum: many of my dearest cohorts in the horticultural community are diametrically opposed to my political leanings, and we set rules up front that discussions of politics are only on subjects that directly affect our business. (Discussions on cannabis production and distribution, for instance, go wonderfully awry when everyone realizes that, appearances notwithstanding, I’m a complete teetotaler as far as marijuana is concerned thanks to various respiratory issues. This just makes the conversations about industrial hemp, of which I’m a passionate advocate, that much more interesting.) However, listening to the same people crying about how younger generations won’t get involved in gardening, then attending lectures that come off as parodies of the District Attorneys’ Convention in the book and movie Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, seems, a little, I don’t know, counterproductive. It’s like listening to the old guard in science fiction literature kvetching about how to attract new readers while mocking them at the same time: considering the costs of air travel and hotels, if I wanted to listen to a herd of seventysomething xenophobes cry impotently about how the universe dared change without their express written permission, I’d go to Armadillocon.
 
Because of this, it might be time for a new garden center conference, for those who want to blast into the middle of the 21st Century instead of pining for the 20th. The interest is there, especially with garden center employees desperately trying to convince their bosses that maybe buying a half-page ad in the local daily newspaper isn’t the best expenditure of their advertising budget. The vendors are out there, especially the ones who’d like to move from Etsy to a proper distributor. Certainly, the musicians are there. What I wasn’t expecting was the enthusiastic response from garden center managers and employees looking for something Different. This may be easier than I thought.
 
As anybody who has spent any time on Facebook will tell you, enthusiasm without commitment is worthless, so the next big hurdle is creating programming that speaks to the newer generations of garden center owners and employees. A few minutes of brainstorming came up with a few ideas for panels and workshops:
 
“Smartphones and Dumbasses”: With the expansion of custom phone apps to help identify garden plants and bugs, creating phone apps to handle other vital garden center functions is both easy and inexpensive. In this two-hour workshop, learn how to use machine learning technology to identify customers screaming “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?’, prove that your garden center has never offered unlimited free landscaping services, demonstrate what happens when you try to plant tomato plants outdoors in Chicago in February, and confirm or deny that the owner automatically gives a 70 percent discount to his/her elementary school teachers. Spend a little money now and save innumerable hours on arguments with idiots and grifters!
 
“Gravestones In the Garden”: The under-50 gardening crowd is looking for unorthodox garden decorations, and your standard distributors offer the usual endless line of twee. More importantly, YOU’RE sick of carrying the same mediocre birdbaths and wall hangings, and want to spice things up a bit. Find out where to get the best concrete dinosaurs, Daleks, kaiju, and gargoyles, how to shut down complaints about how “these are COMPLETELY inappropriate” from fussbudgets, and how to brace the customer who wants 
Dom Perignon-quality black granite tombstones but only has a Dr. Pepper budget.
 
“Electronics and Your Uncle Who Lives In A Tree”: You spend thousands of dollars on a digital signage solution to display specials, calendar events, and plant information, only to have it regularly damaged by occasional customers trying to switch the feed to Fox News. Learn how to use parental locks on remotes to stop Fox News Grandpa hijackings during busy periods, strategic mounting brackets to prevent their reaching the monitors or signage servers, and cattle prods to move them out the door after the inevitable temper tantrums. Discussions also include restroom paint that resists Infowars stickers and methods to recycle Jack Chick pamphlets.
 
“Mommy Will Be Right Back”: with Toys ‘R’ Us and Borders gone and shopping mall pet shops as obsolete as daily newspaper delivery, more and more soccer moms are looking for free babysitting and petting zoo options for their toddlers and preteens, and your garden center is a tempting target. With signs reading “Unescorted children will be given six shots of espresso and a free puppy” making less of an impression, our panelists and the audience discuss methods to keep your garden center child-friendly while preventing non-customers from draining your liability insurance policy. ($25 workshop fee, $75 for optional wood chipper.)
 
“Fan or Smartaleck”: With the current boom in science fiction/fantasy/horror fandom and fannish interests, it’s increasingly difficult to tell the difference between actual plant species and cultivars and ones created for books, comics, movies, and television. Do YOU know how to tell the difference between the bladderworts “Asenath Waite” and “Mrs. Marsh”, or the traits that define a “Violet Carson” rose? More importantly, can you tell the difference between a wiseacre asking about purchasing Whomping Willows and Pink Bunkadoos and the individual who honestly thinks Day of the Triffids is a documentary? Learn what to watch for, and be able to laugh politely when asked “Do you carry Slaver sunflowers?” (Guest lecturers: Dr. Dr. Pamela Iseley and Dr. Alec Holland.)
 
“But It Looked Different In the Video”: Sick of explaining to customers that those rainbow rose or blue Venus flytrap seeds offered for sale on eBay aren’t real? Tired of people arguing that they shouldn’t have to pay your prices for rare plants when Some Guy on the Internet is offering legitimate, guaranteed seeds directly from China for a pittance? Soulhurt from trying to explain the vast difference between fruit trees with multiple varieties grafted on and that “Magical Fruit Salad Plant” seed they saw advertised on Facebook? Nearly homicidal from having 1300 customers pointing to the same Pinterest post that not at all saw any Photoshop manipulation, no sir, we wouldn’t lie? Bring your phone, because we bought one of everything, and you’ll want to take photos of every last weed you’ll see when that customer comes in and asks “So what are WE going to do to get my money back?”
 
“Stand-Up Up Fight or Bug Hunt”: Apply the power of artificial intelligence to solving your customers’ greatest question: whether that blurry phone photo really shows a dangerous, venomous, or invasive insect that’s going to eat the neighborhood. Finally: the one tool to prove to skeptical customers that not every spider is a brown recluse, not every flying insect is an emerald tree borer, and that the scratchings in the new garden bed are from cats and not armadillos.
 
“Every Day is 4/20“: Whether or not your state allows recreational use of marijuana, your workweek will be filled every April 20 with stoners looking for their next distraction, and most guides to psychoactive plants are at least 40 years old. Learn the difference between garden plants that actually have some of psychotropic effect, ones which stretch the meaning of the term “placebo,” and ones with an effect but will make the user regret the day they were conceived.
 
Musical Guests: After a long day talking with vendors and fellow garden center owners/staffers, you’re going to want a break. Please join us all for a musical maelstrom that sums up the new generation of gardeners, with One Eyed Doll and Ministry opening for headliners Gwar and Rob Zombie. No Winstar Casino leftovers for THIS crowd.
 
So…Dallas in 2020? We’ll even try to schedule it for spring, so nobody melts in the heat. What say?

Other News

In separate developments, many thanks to everyone’s celebration of my late cat Leiber, and because Alexandria was mourning harder than we were, we adopted a new cat to keep her company. Considering how badly she wanted to play with Leiber toward the end, it was a matter of finding another cat as enthusiastic about tearing through the house at Mach 4 as she is. This is how we got Simon, a kitten found abandoned near the University of Texas at Dallas campus. He’s almost as quiet as Alexandria: he chirps and murmurs, but he has yet to make a single meow. The best adjective we can use for him is “goofy”: he’s sweet and definitely intelligent, but he remembers to forget that he can’t run through furniture and up walls, to spectacular effect. As of this morning, though, he picked up on Alexandria’s wonderful habit of bushwhacking me in the dark first thing in the morning, so now I have two cats who love my Bill Paxton impersonation screaming “I’m telling ya, there’s something moving and it ain’t us!” Oh, when the days start getting shorter in August, getting ready for work is going to suck.

Recommended Reading

Not that it hasn’t received justifiably rave reviews from much better reviewers than I, but go out and snag Mallory O’Meara’s The Lady From The Black Lagoon, on Millicent Patrick, the actual creator and designer of the monster suit from The Creature From the Black Lagoon. It’s not just a matter of recognizing that an exceptional talent was cut off early due to managerial jealousy (this hit a chord, as I watched a lot of this same behavior in weekly newspaper and magazine publishing), but it’s also a matter of noting that an obscure talent can become an inspiration to a whole new generation of artists given half a chance. As someone studying prop and set design in the hopes of finding new techniques and references that apply to enclosure construction, this matters more than you can know.

Music

The Texas comedian Bill Hicks once described his annual trips to dance clubs as “filling my hump of hate,” and I share that sentiment about going to most music venues. I love catching up with friends and thoroughly enjoy the music, but can’t get past the behavior of the typical showgoer, especially the dolts who feel compelled to capture whole performances on their phones and tablets…held up so that nobody behind them can see a thing. (This is right up there with getting a good location early with an unobstructed view of the stage, only to have last-minute dolts climbing up into my armpit and insisting “we should all share, right?”) Only the right band can convince me that my hump of hate is sufficiently depleted to deal with that, and the news that the band Doll Skin is on tour this year as a headliner, with a stop in Dallas, means that my hump capacity grew four sizes that day. I was lucky enough to catch the band opening for One Eyed Doll two years ago, and a dear friend practically uses the song “Furious Fixation” as a daily soundtrack, so seeing what the band is doing as a followup to the album Manic Pixie Dream Girl is worth a few attacks from the armpit trolls.

(The Texas Triffid Ranch Occasional Newsletter and Feedlot Clearance Sale is a regular Email newsletter, with archives available on the main TTR site at least a month after first publication. To receive the latest newsletters, please subscribe.)

Originally published on February 27, 2019

Okay, so Amanda Thomsen and I were comparing odd tales. Most people know her as the gardening genius behind the book and Web site Kiss My Aster, but like so many of the most interesting people in botany and horticulture, she had a very interesting life before she discovered gardening. It’s not enough to make the observation that the biggest proponents of traditional Japanese gardening were samurai who were tired of war: that works for a lot of us, but not Amanda. I can tell people the tale of how I one-upped Harlan Ellison and his tale of how he was fired from Disney after four hours for joking about a Disney animated porno film with my absolutely true tale of how I got an FBI record for allegedly selling government secrets to the Daleks. (As I told Harlan, I’d NEVER sell government secrets to the Daleks. The Sontarans and Cybermen pay more.) Most people who hear this story just smile, nod, and circumspectly look for anything within reach that could become a weapon. Amanda used to work in the music industry: no matter how disturbing, incriminating, or self-flagellating the story, Amanda will stop for a second, ask you to hold her Dog ‘n Suds root beer (thereby proving her impeccable taste, as she has the old plastic jugs of fresh-poured root beer imported from 1971), and respond. That’s all she does: respond. It’s not her fault that her tales leave most people rocking on the floor, repeatedly screaming “MOMMY DADDY MAKE IT STOP!” She’s only Two Degrees of Francis Bacon from a lot of my musically inclined friends in Dallas, so I just spend my time exclaiming “That was YOU? So how DID he get the airplane seat armrest out?”

This marks the difference between those of us with stories and those without. Those of us With Stories just continue with our little game of nuclear escalation until someone drops the planetkiller, and we all head home and tell ourselves “Good thing that wasn’t me.” Those Without Stories, or without those kind of stories, applaud and exclaim “You should write another book with these stories in it.” Completely misreading the room, they’ll keep asking, too, and drop the writer equivalent of “The Aristocrats”: “It’ll sell really well, too.” Anybody else would respond appropriately, such as jumping up on the table and screaming while trying to hang themselves with their own intestines. Amanda just says “I don’t remember much from those days.” She’s not giving that answer in order to bypass having to explain how the publishing business works, or how anecdote tell-alls haven’t had as much of a market as when calendars read “1983.” She doesn’t remember: whether that’s being diplomatic or that’s a response to years of failed SAN rolls is a point of discussion. My only issue involves my own packrat memory.

The problem isn’t that she doesn’t remember any of the good stories incurred since we started hanging out online a decade ago. It’s that I can’t make the memories go away. I’m not going to tell you about the bobcat and the sleeping bag. I’m not going to talk about how her obsession with Fiestaware left her with the superpower of her teeth glowing in the dark. (When dealing with Girl Scouts, this can be an advantage and a liability, especially when they have night vision goggles and cattle prods, as Girl Scouts are expected to do.) We won’t talk about our comparing notes on how wild sunflower stems practically eat Weedeater line led to our testing the plausibility of the chainsaw duel in Phantasm 2, nor will we talk about the scars incurred when I switched to a hedge trimmer. (A friendly tip: always, ALWAYS use a gas-powered hedge trimmer, because you don’t want to cut into one of those lithium-ion batteries used in the cordless jobs.) There was the riot we accidentally started when an icebreaker questionnaire at the Independent Garden Center conference in Chicago asked “So who’s your favorite Captain: Kirk or Picard?”: she answered “Lochley” and I answered “Rhodes.” There was the midnight run on the Library of Congress to prove to her that the gothic artist Edward Gorey used to illustrate gardening books, and how we got out without breaking any windows or tasering any security guards. Any idiot can set up crop circles, but how many people can recreate Alfonse Mucha paintings in the stock at a commercial mum nursery three days before Halloween? And how that stunt is the reason why all of the fingerprints on her right hand were burned off, and all but the thumbprint on my left?

See, Amanda doesn’t remember any of this. She has a hard enough time remembering when she ran over a post-Christmas poinsettia with a 2011 Accord. She has no memories of our violating a good three dozen FAA regulations and a treaty with Brazil by sending the first kalanchoe to the International Space Station. When the next Mars rover takes photos of the 100-foot Gibby Haynes garden gnome she dropped from low orbit into the middle of Weinbaum Crater, she’s going to be as shocked as the rest of us. When I forget this, all of Amanda’s accomplishments will waft away like fog in a high wind, and that’s completely unacceptable. Please: I beg you. When you come out to one of Amanda’s book signings, don’t just tell her about how her books inspired your life. Show the tattoos. Show the CT scans. Most of all, make sure she remembers one of her greatest adventures by walking up, looking at her completely deadpan, and singing the verse “Crab salad makes you pee blue.” If she really likes you, she’ll show you the Bowie knife she nearly broke taking on a patch of scarlet trumpetvine in 2014, and she’ll tell you about how she disobeyed orders and called off the airstrike with seconds to spare. She may not remember that, but the Dalai Lama does, and he’s eternally grateful.

(Amanda Thomsen’s new book Backyard Adventure: Get Messy, Get Wet, Build Cool Things, and Have Tons of Wild Fun! 51 Free-Play Activities is coming out soon. Buy a copy for yourself, a copy for your best friend, and at least ten for your local libraries. Whatever you do, don’t ask her about the beans.)

Other News

My previous life as a science fiction magazine essayist is one of public record, and some good came from working on and for magazines that were forgotten moments after the last issue saw print. Among other things, if not for a long and very convoluted friendship with one Jeff VanderMeer, I never would have been drawn into the wonderful world of carnivorous plants. This is a roundabout way of saying that this March is a month for anniversaries: thirty years ago on March 9, my first published article, a collection of movie reviews, appeared in a long-forgotten zine. Ten years ago on March 9, the first of my last two books saw print. For the most part, with a few relapses, I’ve stayed away from professional writing since the spring of 2002, and this next month marks the publication of another relapse. Specifically, check out the March 2019 issue of Clarkesworld, and note that this little piece on sorcerers’ gardens may well be the first of many.

Recommended Reading 

If you’d told me back when I was a film critic in the early Nineties that most of the ancillary support industry for motion pictures would be completely obsolete by 2005, I would have laughed and pointed. With video releases a few months or even weeks after a theatrical run, the market for movie novelizations was already dying by the turn of the last century, as was the market for mediocre soundtracks that were the only way to get access to a current hit song. Thanks to streaming services, DVDs and Blu-Ray disks are going the way of Betamax, and with them the huge assemblage of “The Making Of” documentaries that came with the disks. About the only exception to this is the voluminous market for high-end, impeccably printed books on the concept art for films, television shows, and video games, because all of the concept art put together in the early stages of a film production can be just as inspirational as the final product.

Anyway, as someone taking a deep dive at an advanced age into enclosure design, sometimes guides to zoo and natural exhibition design aren’t enough, and it’s time to look at the unnatural. Lately, that’s been a combination of the works of Chris Foss and Syd Mead, classic film designers whose work in the Seventies and Eighties still influence movie set and prop design to this day, and pictorials from Weta Workshop in New Zealand. Lately, the browsing reading keeps coming back to The World of Kong: The Natural History of Skull Island, a pseudobestiary of the concept art from Peter Jackson’s King Kong, and The Art of District 9, which includes concept art and final props from Neill Blomkamp’s 2009 film. Come back in a few months after the next run of new enclosures are complete, and you’ll understand why.

Music

For various reasons, instrumental music is a big part of the background at the Triffid Ranch. While sculpting or repotting while watching video or listening to spoken-word audio is easy, writing or sketching with either in the background is nearly impossible, and even songs with a significant portion of dialogue are impossible to navigate while composing blog posts or essays. This means that instrumental or electronica get a lot of play, especially at the Day Job, and the 21st Century marvel of streaming services means that my horizons are expanded daily. That’s why I’d like to turn everyone to Sarah Schachner: her specialty is game soundtracks, which means setting mood in particular game sequences with pieces that won’t get overly repetitious if a player spends too much time trying to work out how to move forward.

Anyway, I’ve been a fan of Sarah’s work for years (her sister is a longtime online friend), and game design is already a big aspect of inspiration for a lot of Triffid Ranch enclosures, so discovering that Sarah wrote the score for the new game Anthem means that it’s getting a lot of play in the gallery over the next month. (A project that’s still a very long way away is an exhibition of new enclosures that requires smartphones: stand in front of an enclosure and view a browser page that includes essential information about the plants and construction, while the headphones give a unique musical score that cuts off when the viewer moves to the next enclosure. Again, it’s a very long way off, but when the Triffid Ranch is big enough to pull this off, I would love to hire Sarah for the music, because.)

(The Texas Triffid Ranch Occasional Newsletter and Feedlot Clearance Sale is a regular Email newsletter, with archives available on the main TTR site at least a month after first publication. To receive the latest newsletters, please subscribe.)

Originally published on January 7, 2019

The parties are over. The decorations are put up. The Merry Christmas/Happy New Year accoutrements at the grocery store are in the clearance aisle, already marked 50 percent off or more. The shortbread cookie tins are already being used for their second lives as sewing supply containers. At the day job, managers, directors, and executive VPs are coming back from extended vacations, meaning that daily office productivity just took a hit until they rediscover their favorite bright sparkly object or until Memorial Day, whichever comes first. It may be cold and rainy, or cold and snowy, but you can walk in public without a PA system pumping carols and novelty songs at “11”. In other words, it’s time to get busy.

For those of us in horticultural venues, it’s really time to get busy, because we’re already running out of time. Halfway through January, we only have two months before the beginning of spring, which means EVERYTHING has to be done by the time everyone gets the gardening bug. Seedlings. Tissue culture meristems. Unique pots. Tent and booth fees for shows and markets. I won’t say that sleep is overrated, because that’s a cliché. I WILL say that as soon as someone develops an effective and inexpensive cure for sleep, I’m investing in the company.

This time of the year is also when fellow retailers and artists relate their favorite Stupid Human Tricks from the previous holiday season. These can include non-customers who drop their kids off at a store and assume that the staff will act as free babysitters while Mommy and Daddy shop next door, or down the street, or in the next time zone. A lot of times, it includes customers who were the owners’ elementary school teachers 40 years back and expect a special 80-percent-off discount because of that vital connection. (Every jeweler reading this just nodded in recognition.) Others relate the customer who stated “I know the owner, and he told me I get a discount”…to the owner, and she’s never seen this person in her life. And who can forget the screams of “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?” and the response “Should I? Are you wanted by the police?”

2018 had a lot of stories like this at the Triffid Ranch. Now, there are the stories where the person involved was understandably mistaken and everyone laughed about it later. These stories should never be shared without permission, and usually with drinks of everyone’s choice in hand. However, there are the stories where the person involved wasn’t a customer, never would be a customer, and whose smirk of “Haven’t you ever heard of ‘the customer is always right’?” should be answered with a sack full of caltrops that reads “WHO’S LAUGHING NOW, JACK? WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?” on the side. Where this sack is inserted, and whether the sack should be electrified, depends upon the intensity of the smirk. It should never depend upon the dollar value of the transaction to be disputed: at the gallery, the worst offenders are bar owners who call to get a very big and very expensive enclosure delivered to their venue for free, because “you could use the exposure.” (Without fail, I read about these venues shutting down in the middle of the night with no warning to landlords or employees, the interior contents sold at about one in the morning to fend off coke dealer beatings, and creditors and the FBI trying to find what assumed name the owner is using THIS time. This is entertainment enough.)

After a while, when retailers get together and relax a bit, we all share our Amazon Showcase stories. This is the equivalent of the famed comedian joke “The Aristocrats,” only without a distinctive opener or punchline. All have the same theme, though: the customer has assumptions that because Amazon or eBay do things a particular way, “you should just” do the same thing. Bookstore friends relate the customers who tell them “You should start selling Kindles here,” and who escalate their assumptions when told that Kindles are an exclusively Amazon product. An acquaintance who worked in a gift shop told me about a customer pointing to a Hallmark Star Trek Christmas decoration from 20 years ago on Amazon and insisted that she could order one at the original retail price, because the Amazon price was far too high.  We all have one variation on the Monty Python bookstore sketch, and we all have a variation on the Lou Costello birthday cake sketch. The Euclidean ideal of these stories is the person who walks in, looks around, and says “Do you know someone who sells something exactly like this, but just not for so muuuuuuuuch?” The most common Amazon Showcase story, though, always involves someone who assumes that a price on Amazon should be the price everywhere else, no matter what. The Triffid Ranch has two versions: the person who bought a dead or dying plant from an Amazon reseller and expects assistance in getting a refund, or an incident that happens about once per month.

(phone rings) “Hello, this is the Texas Triffid Ranch. How may I help?”

“Yes. I’m a (doctor, lawyer, MBA, software development project manager, or other charter member of the Dunning-Kruger Club), and I’m wanting to buy a (Nepenthes rajah, Nepenthes hamata, Nepenthes attenboroughii, or other very rare, very temperamental, and very expensive carnivorous plant). Price is no object.”

“I may be able to help. Out of curiosity, have you kept a carnivorous plant before?”

“No, but I saw one on television today, and I WANT one.”

“Okay, let me check what I have in propagation right now. (Quick search.) I have one right now, in a custom enclosure.”

“I don’t want that. I just want the plant.”

“Oooookay. I can remove it if you’d like. Do you need a pot, or do you already have one?”

“My kid has an old aquarium that I can use. How much is it?”

“Well, considering the size, it would be $Price.”

“That’s completely unsuitable. Do you have any that are smaller?”

“I don’t, but I can recommend other carnivorous plant retailers who may be able to help. Have you contacted X or Y?”

“I already contacted them, and they don’t have one. You’re the only person in the Dallas area who shows up on a Google search, and I NEED one.”

“Sorry, but at $Price, I’m practically selling it at cost.” 

“Well, I KNOW you can do better. I found someone online who’s selling one for (one-fourth to one-tenth of $Price).”

“And who is this? I’m very legitimately curious.”

(Customer gives a URL for an Amazon reseller who allegedly has the plant in question. Yes, it’s significantly cheaper than the cost any legitimate nursery could charge and still make its money back. The posting also has a picture of the plant that was stolen from a legitimate nursery’s Web site, as well as the description. The reseller is also selling such wonders as rainbow rose seeds, guaranteed blue Venus flytrap seeds, and lots of other miracles whose photos have so much of a connection to Photoshop that they’d qualify for alimony if they ever separated. Odds are pretty good that the reseller doesn’t have one of these plants, and likely never will.)

“Sorry, but there’s no way I can match this price, and neither will any other legitimate nursery or retailer.”

“But THEY’RE selling it at that price! Why are you being so unreasonable? Can’t you just cooperate?”

“Again, I can’t.”

“But they’re SELLING it at THAT price.” (Sudden menace over the phone.) “I KNOW you can get one at that price, too!”

“I’ll tell you what. If they’re selling it for that price, why not get a deal and buy it from Amazon?

“Because I want to SEE it first! I don’t want to get ripped off!”

Other News

Sigh. Three months of hype on the 2019 Pantone color of the year, and the horticulture community went into overload on new cultivars and varietals of indoor and outdoor plants that match. They’re beautiful, too. I’m just disappointed. Considering the number of bladderwort cultivars named after H.P. Lovecraft characters, and the number of daylily cultivars with Star Trek references for names, not one breeder, not ONE, could name a cultivar “Rick Grimes” and cash in on millions of non-gardeners who’d be willing to take a chance? Man, I dread the announcement of the 2020 Pantone color, because we’ll probably drop THAT ball, too.

In other developments, Some of you may have already noticed cover stories in the Dallas Observer and Fangoria about the return of Joe Bob Briggs, Official Drive-In Movie Critic of Rockwall, Texas, to video thanks to the Shudder streaming service. More than a few times during my long-defunct writing career and a lot more after I quit pro writing, I was compared to Joe Bob (rarely to his alter ego, John Bloom) in writing style and intensity. That makes perfect sense, as I literally grew up with the “Joe Bob Goes To the Drive-In” column in the late and lamented Dallas Times Herald, starting in spring 1982 with the second column reviewing Mad Monkey Kung Fu. (Sadly, while the Joe Bob columns were published repeatedly in the 1990s, nobody ever put together a collection of John Bloom movie reviews written under his own byline for the Times Herald. This is a shame, because many of his reviews were funnier than the comedies he viewed. A lot of that well-deserved snark transferred over to the Joe Bob columns, and a lot more never made it to print or video: I interviewed him in 1991 for a magazine that promptly went under two weeks after I handed in the interview, and that interview included being backstage during a taping of Showtime’s “Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater” that included a review of Oliver Stone’s The Doors. You don’t worry about laughing too hard and messing up a take when the camera crew were literally falling down laughing at the same cracks.) Well, now he’s back, he’s back in Dallas, and he’s going to be one of the headliner guests at Texas Frightmare Weekend in May. To quote the man himself, heads roll.

Recommended Reading

A bushel-basket of new references led to a serious fall down an industrial design rabbit hole over the last month, but one to buy now is Typeset In the Future: Typography and Design in Science Fiction Movies by Dave Addey. The book expands extensively on the blog of the same name, which itself started as an analysis of the typography and logo design in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Anyone interested in graphic design, especially logo and icon design, will be drooling over the in-depth discussion of what makes the perfect logo of the future (which, incidentally, is funny as hell), and everyone else will drool over the interviews on what design decisions in Alien, Blade Runner, and Wall-E still hold up, which ones aged horribly, and which ones still affect modern graphic design decades later. On a personal level, Typeset In the Future helped settle an impasse in an enclosure design that had been stuck since the Triffid Ranch was in the old gallery, so expect the end results to premiere at an open house this summer.

Music

As of this month, I have known Texas blues musician Cricket Taylor for 28 years, and she was my neighbor for two of those years when we lived in Dallas’s Exposition Park in the early 1990s. (The artist’s lofts in which we lived had communal restrooms, and one of the only good things about having to get up to go to my day job at the time was listening to Cricket practice new songs in the women’s restroom because she swore it had the best acoustics in the Dallas area.) She’s one of the smartest, most considerate, and most musically talented people I know, and the fact that she’s not packing auditoriums with 30,000 people at a time is a crime. Let’s rectify that, shall we?

(The Texas Triffid Ranch Occasional Newsletter and Feedlot Clearance Sale is a regular Email newsletter, with archives available on the main TTR site at least a month after first publication. To receive the latest newsletters, please subscribe.)

Originally published on December 18, 2018

Okay, so the holiday season is going full tilt, with the expected diminishing of daylight hours in the Northern Hemisphere. All of the temperate carnivores, particularly flytraps and Sarracenia pitcher plants, should be in full dormancy by now, and stay there until at least the middle of March. Nepenthes and Cephalotus pitcher plants may not need a similar full dormancy, but they certainly won’t mind a relative rest, and giving them lowered daylight hours increases the odds of their blooming in spring if they’re mature enough. Orchids, gesneriads, aloes, euphorbias, citrus…all of these definitely appreciate a bit of rest during the winter months. The trick is knowing HOW much of a rest, and of what kind.

 For most, the rest period is determined by photoperiod, the number of light hours a plant receives per day. (One could argue that thanks to axial tilt, winter light intensity is diminished alongside the number of hours, but we’ll leave that out of the conversation for now.) As far as carnivores and protocarnivores are concerned, even species generally considered to grow all year around could use a photoperiod rest through the winter, with either decreased light or cooler temperatures or both. Tropical carnivores such as Nepenthes pitcher plants and bladderworts use photoperiod as a cue to store up energy for blooming in spring, and the tuberous sundews of Australia use photoperiod to prepare for emergence in the monsoon season. Want really spectacular blooms in spring with tropical sundews and bladderworts? Give them a rest now by matching the photoperiod of plants under lights with the outside dawn/dusk cycle. If that’s not practical, at least cut plant light to nine to ten hours per day.

With both plants under lights and ones in a windowsill, make sure to protect your plant from excessive artificial light outside of that winter lighting schedule. Moonlight is generally too weak to affect plants, and they’re already adapted to it, but street lights, porch lights, living room lamps, kitchen lights, and even nearby nightlights can adversely affect some plants’ ability to bloom. Poinsettias are an extreme example: getting those brilliant red bracts in time for Christmas requires putting them into a closet or other lightproof space at night. One flashlight, one open closet door, one porch light turned on at the wrong time before the poinsettia is ready, and you’re going to have to wait for next year.

 The worst part of this is that it seems counterintuitive, especially for those of us with SADS. Right at the time when we’re craving more and more energetic lights, photoperiod-dependent plants are asking for a cessation of hostilities. Yes, not being able to enjoy them in winter is aggravating, but come spring, when they’re exploding with blooms, you’ll be glad to have let them sleep in.

What You’ve Missed:

Oh, dear. It’s been a little while since the last newsletter, with more than a few shows and updates since then. Recent updates to the web site include:

Enclosures: Hans-Ruedi II (2018)

Enclosures: Hoodoo (2018)

The Aftermath: Blood Over Texas Horror For the Holidays V

The Aftermath: Swizzle’s Hawaiian Holiday Popup 2018

Personal Interlude: The Honeymoon Wall

Other News

 Well, never let it be said that the Triffid Ranch doesn’t jump onto a social media trend a half-decade after everyone else does. For those who have lovingly nuhdzed me for the last two years about setting up an Instagram account, go check out @txtriffidranch right now. For those who haven’t, head over there anyway.

Recommended Reading

Because it’s that season, it’s time to look back on the basics. Both for beginning carnivorous plant enthusiasts and those experienced growers wanting to expand their range, you can’t go wrong with the 20-year classic, The Savage Garden by Peter D’Amato. You can get more detail on carnivorous plant morphology, relationships, and ecology with the Redfern Natural History volumes, but as far as good growing tips and propagation methods, you can’t beat D’Amato’s tried and true techniques. While the original 1998 edition is still a valuable guide, the recent updated version is worth the money, especially if you to get an autographed copy.

Music

Some of you fellow Eighties brats may remember the British metal band Bad News, either for the two pseudodocumentaries on the BBC’s The Comic Strip Presents, its live tour, or its sole album. A few may have specific opinions about lead singer and guitarist Vim Fuego, guitarist Colin Grigson, bassist Den Dennis, and drummer Spider Webb Spider Webb (as played by Adrian Edmondson, Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer, and Peter Richardson), and a few might even notice significant similarities between the two pseudodocumentaries and a pseudodocumentary that came out a year later about a band named Spinal Tap. For everyone else, it’s time for you to become familiar with a criminally overlooked vestige of Twentieth Century heavy metal history, if only for a celebration of the thirtieth anniversary release of the greatest holiday metal song ever written, “Cashing In On Christmas.” 

The Texas Triffid Ranch Occasional Newsletter and Feed Lot Clearance Sale is copyright 2018 by Paul Riddell, and may be reproduced in its entirety and forwarded at will. The Texas Triffid Ranch is Dallas’s pretty much only carnivorous plant gallery, located in scenic Richardson, Texas, and is open by appointment. More information is available at www.txtriffidranch.com. With the announcement of Pantone’s new color for 2019, I now want to breed a rose that color, and name the cultivar “Rick Grimes.”

(The Texas Triffid Ranch Occasional Newsletter and Feedlot Clearance Sale is a regular Email newsletter, with archives available on the main TTR site at least a month after first publication. To receive the latest newsletters, please subscribe.)

Originally published on September 17, 2018

So it’s been raining a bit in the Dallas area this September. A good thunderstorm on Labor Day is so common that nobody is particularly surprised, but then we usually go for about three weeks of heat and dry until one good cold front passes through, bringing a classic Texas gullywasher with it. After that, we enter traditional Texas autumn, which generally runs until the end of November. Warm and dry in October is expected: the last time we actually got cold at Halloween was in 1993, where temperatures surprisingly went below freezing and we had probably our only serious fall color in a generation. This September, though, the rains keep coming. We got the usual Labor Day downpour, and then we kept Houston-level humidity interspersed with flash rains.

One of Dallas’s more entertaining meteorological phenomena is our propensity toward very compact and very intense storms forming out of nowhere, so anyone driving along Central Expressway in the late afternoon would have seen the east side of Central with a bare misting of rain and the west side so inundated that visibility was close to zero. That’s before the rains really picked up: by midnight, we received a full six inches (15.24 cm) at the greenhouse, and the rain kept coming all Saturday. We could at least blame that on the remnants of a tropical storm blasting through, but the rest of the week? Abnormally (and much appreciated) cool temperatures AND a nearly constant misting, with no significant breaks for the immediate future.

Naturally, the Sarracenia are beside themselves with joy.

As a rule, North Texas has two growing seasons, separated by the lead smelter exhaust we fondly call “summer.” The spring growing season starts somewhere between the end of February and the middle of March, depending upon how many sudden cold snaps, surprise frosts, and occasional ice and snow storms interrupt the progression. With only a couple of exceptions in the last 50 years, the St. Patrick’s Day weekend is the point of no return, where the odds of another killing freeze drop to close to nothing. The cold frames and cloches go into storage very quickly, as April temperatures rapidly turn these into vegetable steamers. All cold-weather crops such as spinach are long-dead by the beginning of May, and everything generally stops by the middle of June. At that point, we’re both too hot and too dry for much growth of any sort, and all of the indigenous flora either burns off or goes dormant for the rest of the summer.

Autumn is when everything comes back, and that particularly applies to carnivores. Pretty much all temperate carnivores react to the change in weather by growing new leaves and traps, but Venus flytraps and North American pitcher plants go overboard in both size and color. Even pitcher plants with a mediocre appearance in spring tend to have brighter colors in autumn, but white pitchers (Sarracenia leucophylla) make up for lost time in September and October. And that’s under a typical Dallas autumn, with long dry interludes between rainstorms. This September, combine abnormally cool temperatures with a long and steady mist, and the leucophylla are going berserk. At this rate, they’ll be pulling their roots up and going for walks by October 1, and they’ll keep this up well past Halloween, or until night temperatures approach freezing, whichever comes first.

And the absolute best part of the boon in good carnivore weather? Both Sarracenia pitcher plants and Venus flytraps fluoresce strongly under ultraviolet light at about 380 nanometers, but some carnivores fluoresce across a wider range than others. Sarracenia leucophylla in particular fluoresces under moonlight, which helps explain why its trap contents tend to contain an inordinate number of moths, click beetles, and other completely nocturnal prey. With the Harvest Moon on September 24 and the Hunter’s Moon on October 24, anyone in the Dallas area with leucophyllas in their carnivorous plant collections are going to be blown away. With the number of Datura stramonium flowers growing alongside the Triffid Ranch greenhouse, the effect of the full moon at zenith will quote a rather popular film at the gallery: “it’s so dark, it’ll blind you.” That is, if the storm clouds ever fade.

Recent Updates

Recent updates to the web site:

New enclosure: “Raptor” (2018)

New enclosure: “Tezcatlipoca Blues” (2018)

New Article: “Shoutout For a Friend”

New Article: “State of the Gallery: September 2018”

Other News

Firstly, those who participated in the drawing for free Harlan Ellison books should have your randomly selected paperbacks or hardcovers, along with other neat items for neat people. Well, with the exception of you, Volly. You got the best of the lot: autographed copies of The Last Dangerous Visions and the autobiography Working Without A Net, as well as DVDs of the first four seasons of Cutter’s World. Hang onto those, because they might be  valuable one of these days, right alongside the twentieth anniversary issue of Science Fiction Eye.

And for those who came to the newsletter by way of the recent Harlan Ellison giveaway, I’d like to note that Harlan Ellison Books is putting out not one but FOUR new books, including the definitive Blood’s A Rover collection. One of the collections contains the just-rediscovered scripts and synopsis for Man Without Time, a TV series intended to star Leonard Nimoy after the cancellation of Star Trek, and the story of how it was found is just as intriguing as the series concept. Preorder now so you don’t get disappointed when it sells out within minutes.

For those in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, September doesn’t just mean “a welcome break from the soul-crippling heat of summer.” It also means “reptile show season,” particularly with the NARBC reptile and amphibian show at the Arlington Convention Center on September 22 and 23. The Triffid Ranch won’t have a booth this year (although I’m thinking very long and hard about September 2019), but just look for the albino with the Triffid Ranch T-shirt on a mad quest for cork bark, Tillandsias, and axolotls.

And speaking of reptiles, it is my great pleasure to announce that the Texas Triffid Ranch just entered a partnership with DFW Reptarium in Plano to exhibit and sell Triffid Ranch carnivorous plant enclosures. Right now, we’re starting small, with the opportunity to view the big Nepenthes bicalcarata enclosure “Hans-Ruedi,” but expect a lot of exclusives as business picks up.  At the very least, DFW Reptarium is without doubt the best reptile and amphibian shop available in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in the last 20 years, so come in to view Nepenthes and stay to look over panther chameleons, frilled dragons, arrow-poison frogs, and an absolutely beautiful crocodile monitor named Whisper. Whisper is worth making a lunch break trip just on her own.

Recommended Reading

Inside the Sideshow Studio (2015, Insight Editions, ISBN 978-1-60887-476-1)

Finding this in big piles at the local Half Price Books doesn’t diminish its value: this is a book that didn’t reach the audience that needed to see it. While the layout suggested that this would be a nice “look at how cool our workplace is compared to your horrible open office nightmare” press release, this is actually a very illuminating view of the organization necessary when a creative company grows beyond the “two people in a garage” stage. Just about anybody in book publishing, magazines, comics, games electronic and print, collectibles, Web content sites, and weekly newspapers has tales of venues and businesses that went under because one or two people simply couldn’t let go of an area wildly outside of their expertise, or who figured that continuity between products or product lines was unnecessary. Yes, the book has a lot of photos of employees’ work areas as all of the cool toys and accoutrements found on pretty much every desk of every tech job of the last twenty years. No, there’s nowhere near enough of an explanation of the essential tools and resources and how they differ from the office toys. That said, the book emphasizes the different essential departments in a successful licensed property company, from packaging art to publicity to shipping, by noting how everyone works together for a successful release.

Music

I could say a lot about the musical adventure that goes by the name of Ego Likeness, and add a few notes about side projects like Stoneburner and Hopeful Machines, but that would be cheating. A decade ago, I came across my first sample of the brilliance of Steven Archer and Donna Lynch thanks to a mixer CD containing the song “Water to the Dead” and “16 Miles,” and their work is a regular part of the Triffid Ranch workshop soundtrack. Sadly, I have yet to see a live Ego Likeness show: although Austin and San Antonio have a firm appreciation of Ego Likeness genius, no venue in Dallas is willing to take a chance on a booking. Let’s fix that, shall we?

The Texas Triffid Ranch Occasional Newsletter and Feed Lot Clearance Sale is copyright 2018 by Paul Riddell, and may be reproduced and forwarded at will. The Texas Triffid Ranch is Dallas’s pretty much only carnivorous plant gallery, located in scenic Richardson, Texas, and is open by appointment. More information is available at www.txtriffidranch.com. And in a reality very close to ours, every film starring Mel Gibson has his parts replaced by Mel Brooks, and vice versa. Let’s see if anybody notices.

(The Texas Triffid Ranch Occasional Newsletter and Feedlot Clearance Sale is a regular Email newsletter, with archives available on the main TTR site at least a month after first publication. To receive the latest newsletters, please subscribe.)

Originally published on October 12, 2018

Right about now, phone lines and Google searches are full of questions across North Texas, both from new transplants and a few longtimers. Namely, they find strange green fruit about the size of a softball lying all about the place, with strange folds and grooves evocative of a human brain. Congratulations: you’ve just come across Maclura pomifera, also known throughout North Texas as “Osage orange,” “bois d’arc,” and “Didn’t I tell you kids to clean up that crap off the yard before it starts to smell?” As with oranges, apples, and avocados, now is the perfect time to enjoy Osage oranges as nature intended: most people use them as balls in impromptu skittles and cricket matches, and a few lobbed over a fence are great for murdering swimming pool and hot tub filters in the middle of the night. They float, they roll, they split open on impact when overripe: they’re the perfect symbol of Texas autumn. Why we don’t build giant parade floats shaped like them is beyond me.

Because of their ubiquity, I’m regularly asked about what to do with them: the tree’s wood is famous for constructing longbows and fraternity hazing paddles, but most people are at a loss with what to do with the fruit when the Google searches don’t include pie recipes. Because the Triffid Ranch strives to be a horticultural authority, below are the most commonly asked questions about the noble Osage orange and answers that may or may not be useful:

How do you locate an Osage orange tree before it starts dropping fruit?

Since the natural tendency of Osage orange trees is to freeze and wait for a predator to leave before getting up and prancing away, you have to outthink them to find them. Consider taking a bath, brushing your teeth, changing your underwear, reading instead of watching television, and turning off your phone while driving. Such contrary and antisocial behavior will confuse the Osage orange tree, causing it to display its natural phosphorescence, where it will be easy to catch and tame.

Another guaranteed way to find them is to look along sidewalks and bikepaths. Since Osage orange branches feature three-inch thorns, they’re regularly planted in suburban thoroughfares to discourage invaders and pedestrians. Whether allowed to grow foliage over a sidewalk or to have that foliage trimmed off and dropped on a bikepath, such “John Galt gardening,” if applied regularly, encourages joggers and bicyclists to find alternate routes, and is easier to camouflage than broken glass or caltrops. In this case, look for blood trails, discarded bicycle inner tubes, and yuppies screaming “I didn’t know it would take off MY face!”

Are Osage oranges edible?

Osage oranges are edible, and even tasty, if you happen to be a Columbian mammoth or a ground sloth. If you are, report at once to your local Time Agent mobilization center, because you’re really, really lost. For everyone else, the interior of an Osage orange is essentially a ball of sisal rope packed full of cotton and then soaked in lime juice, with a few sunflower seeds for flavor. If chowing down on old baseballs is your way of getting enough fiber in your diet, knock yourself out.

What do Osage oranges taste like?

Despair, depression, and unwashed feet. They’re the fruit equivalent of a Cory Doctorow novel, only with more depth and nuance. But please: don’t let me dissuade you from trying a big fibrous bite for yourself. I love watching dogs pick up toads in their mouths and then have to drag their tongues across the lawn to remove the taste of toad urine, too.

When Osage oranges fall from their tree, are they ripe?

Now that’s a stupid question. Osage oranges reproduce much like crows: when the young leave the nest, the parent will stick around to watch, but won’t actually help if the youngster gets in trouble. That’s why, for the first six months of life, Osage orange fruit have venomous quills with barbs that stick in the flesh. Early on in their history, this was to hitch rides on dinosaurs and uintatheres so their seeds were spread hundreds or possibly thousands of kilometers away from their original dropping grounds. Now, it’s so the seedlings have a ready and available source of nitrogen as their new host reaches the end of its travels and the corpse starts to rot.

Why do squirrels tear up fallen Osage oranges and leave a horrible mess in my yard?

Surprisingly, it’s not because squirrels hate you and want you to suffer. Well, that’s a factor, too, but not the only one. It has everything to do with the great squirrel god BROOOOOOOON: when squirrels pick a new king, any that can pronounce their god’s name without passing gas are automatic contenders. The next test is to seek the key to the Squirrel King’s Bedroom, which is hidden in an Osage orange bud at the beginning of the year and the fruit allowed to grow around it. Any who possess the Key and then spend a year as king are then transmogrified into the next stage of rodent evolution: the Fratbro. Leaving horrible messes in your front yard and getting indignant when called on it is just a matter of preparation for larger messes later.

How do I plant my own Osage orange tree?

The bad news: it involves blood, stolen organs, and bitter tears. The good news: it doesn’t necessarily involve YOUR blood and stolen organs.

I heard that Osage oranges could be used to repel cockroaches. How does that work?

Just follow these three steps:

Numero Uno: Hold the Osage orange over the roach to be repellled. 

Numero two-o: Aim so that the Osage orange lands near but not on the roach.

Numero three-o: Release the Osage orange, note the big thick meaty thud as it hits the ground, and watch the roach run off in the opposite direction. You would, too, if one of these nearly hit you in the head.

Okay: can you use Osage oranges to KILL roaches?

Also absolutely: if you have a good fastball, you could kill mountain lions, rhinoceroses, nematodes, lampreys, and the occasional 300-pound Samoan attorney, too. It’s all about proper application.

How do I remove an Osage orange tree from my yard if I decide I don’t want it any more?

Oh, now you’re in trouble. Osage oranges imprint on their owners, and will try to track them down when abandoned. This may involve traveling great distances, which explains how they became invasive in New Zealand. (This, incidentally, is why New Zealand has such an extensive program to prevent the introduction of exotic intruders. Osage orange/kauri pine hybrids are a wily breed that regularly knock over garbage cans, destroy dams, and interfere with orc industry. Worse, a recent cooperation with introduced Australian brushtailed possums and indigenous keas may leave most of South Island uninhabitable by humans by 2040, to an unknown purpose that may involve local sports journalism.) You now have two real choices, because saturation nuclear bombing just encourages new growth: move to Antarctica sometime in the early Jurassic, or spend more than two months in a highrise loft or other area that sets off the tree’s natural fear of heights and plastic people.

Is this accurate advice?

Let’s put it this way: come over here so I can pull your other leg, because otherwise you’re going to walk in circles for the rest of your life.

Recent updates to the web site:

New enclosure: “Woodrue” (2018)

New Article: “State of the Gallery: October 2018”

Other News

At the time of this writing, the newsfeeds are full of aftermath video now that Hurricane Michael has passed through, and the damage in the Florida Panhandle has a personal stake. Sixteen years ago, I took a job in Tallahassee that literally changed my life, and spent a lot of time in Panama City and Wakulla Springs as well. While it’s every individual’s choice as to whether and where to send aid, but the site Charitywatch has a list of recommended charities both vetted for their legitimacy and their efficiency. Me, I still owe the people of Tallahassee a debt I can never repay for their kindnesses and friendliness when I moved there, but I’m going to do my best.

In lighter discussions, the big Harlan Ellison package giveaway was a big success: everyone who responded has received their package of swag, with the exception of two friends in Canada and Australia. (To mail to them requires getting to a US Post Office during office hours in order to fill out Customs paperwork, but theirs are going out this week.) Obviously, doing this on a regular basis isn’t practical without taking another side-job, but the idea of sending off little messages-in-a-bottle on a regular basis has appeal. (Yes, you can tell I grew up during the zine days of the Eighties and Nineties, where casual acquaintances would send off 20-kilo packages of random cultural detritus for no other reason than to share the wealth.) Details will follow, but expect both random giveaways to both subscribers signing up after the previous newsletter and to the whole of the mailing list. See? I TOLD you it would be worth the effort to subscribe.

And on completely different subjects, the Spectrum Awards, which honor the best of fantastic art, just opened for the 26th annual awards, and this is the first year the Triffid Ranch submits photos. The original plan was to do so at the beginning of 2017, and then the move from the Valley View gallery got in the way, and a lot of life intruded on doing so in 2018. Next year’s Spectrums, though, are an option: I have no delusion of winning any category, but I’d like to know that I’d qualify for inclusion in the big annual volume. And so it goes.

Recommended Reading

For the last ten years, Stewart McPherson and the rest of the crew at Redfern Natural History has set the standard for the ultimate in books on carnivorous plants and carnivorous plant habitats, and most of us had no idea that he was only getting started. Redfern Natural History’s guides to Sarracenia and Nepenthes pitcher plants usually contain personally witnessed information only released to the public weeks or even days before the publication of new books (the Nepenthes guides have been rendered obsolete by McPherson’s own research to the point where Redfern has published paperback booklets on the newest available information), and Redfern’s guides to Heliamphora pitcher plants may not be exceeded in this century. At the gallery, the carnivorous plant reference library was a very small shelf before Redfern Natural History came along, and now I need more room. This is all preamble for the much-anticipated Redfern volume on Cephalotus follicularis, the Australian pitcher plant, coming out at the end of the year. Buy it NOW, before the preorders are sold out.

Music

In a better timeline than the one that we’re in now, I wouldn’t have to tell you about Hail Sagan. Talent should tell, and darkwave would be leading a renaissance in terrestrial and satellite radio, especially for those of us who survived radio in the Eighties. However, since we’re stuck with the Paratime level we’re on, we can make up for this disgrace by getting word out. And as soon as the band tours again, you WILL know about any tour dates near Dallas.

The Texas Triffid Ranch Occasional Newsletter and Feed Lot Clearance Sale is copyright 2018 by Paul Riddell, and may be reproduced in its entirety and forwarded at will. The Texas Triffid Ranch is Dallas’s pretty much only carnivorous plant gallery, located in scenic Richardson, Texas, and is open by appointment. More information is available at www.txtriffidranch.com. And in yet another parallel reality, a 61-year-old Sid Vicious is strapping on his bass guitar and going on stage in Branson, Missouri…to open for Scott Weiland.

(The Texas Triffid Ranch Occasional Newsletter and Feedlot Clearance Sale is a regular Email newsletter, with archives available on the main TTR site at least a month after first publication. To receive the latest newsletters, please subscribe.)

Originally published on August 30, 2018

Okay, so it’s been a little while since the last newsletter, but life intruded. Honest. Let’s see: several gallery open houses, including our recent third anniversary event on August 18. Lots of wrangling on new enclosures, including some custom commissions and a literary-themed Mexican butterwort enclosure inspired by the Ernest Hogan novel Smoking Mirror Blues, and preparation for more by mid-October. There was the big carnivorous plant workshop at Curious Garden near White Rock Lake, and medical issues around Texas Frightmare Weekend that still give me creaks in my left ankle. (Ever get your teeth into a really good chunk of gristle in chicken or beef and decide to crunch down? That’s what I hear in my left ankle and right knee on rainy nights.) The author Harlan Ellison died, and the carnivorous plant expert Adrian Slack died. I could just send you to the main Web site for all of those details, and that’s probably the best option for rehashes and updates The newsletter is best for new content.

 As for all of you new subscribers, welcome. The purpose of this little missive isn’t just to pass on news and information about Dallas’s pretty much only carnivorous plant gallery, although that’s going to be about 70 percent of its weight by volume. Its stated purpose is to become a replacement for the old Triffid Ranch Facebook page, particularly by sharing information that won’t disappear in your news feed or that doesn’t have to be boosted in order to be seen by more than ten people. It’s also a great way for readers to hang onto links and recommendations and act on them if desired: how often have you been ready to click a link for a new book or event, only to have Facebook reload the page and lose that link forever? None of that here. This is for sharing with no expectation of return, not to goose someone’s stock prices. Hence, why the recommendations and referrals appear on the bottom, so you’re more likely to act on them.

Other News

A lot has happened in the last few months, and one of the most bittersweet involves local artist Larry Carey, the creator of that incredible Triffid Ranch mandala featured on posters and T-shirts for the last five years. I worked for and with Larry for three-quarters of a decade, and our coffee-break conversations about innumerable subjects were an inspiration for research that still surprises me to this day. Anyway, Larry is leaving the Dallas area (I’m not at liberty to say where just yet, but he’s apparently much happier already), and without his inspiration and encouragement, the Triffid Ranch wouldn’t be anything close to what it is today. Godspeed, Larry, and thank you for my having to triple-research everything before I made a statement.

In other developments, the Dallas Observer Best of Dallas Awards nominees for 2018 are out, and voting continues for the final awards until September 8. Now, it’s not necessary to write in the Triffid Ranch for “Best Carnivorous Plant Gallery” because it won last year’s Best Of Dallas Award (but feel free to do so if you’re having fun with the concept), but vote for the other entries anyway. I’m feeling rather protective of the Observer as of late, and it’s time to let its current crop of writers and artists know that we appreciate them.

Recommended Reading

Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980

Bogdanović by Bogdanović: Yugoslav Memorials through the Eyes of Their Architect

Both volumes are supplements to the current Toward a Concrete Utopia exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibition was spurred by online interest in the modernist memorials misrepresented as Communist tributes instead of war memorials, and both books go into both the inspirations for these massive constructs and their current situations. Some were destroyed in war after Yugoslavia tore itself apart, others were neglected, and many are undergoing restoration and reconstruction as a tribute to the past. Considering how little information existed on the entire movement in the West until very recently, and how many of them were designed to weather and age with their environments, I’m recommending them as essential references for both general landscape and green rooftop designers, especially those who like their statements BIG.

Music

With the sheer range of music available through Apple Music or Spotify, it’s hard not to fall down a rabbit hole when encountering genres or movements, and I’ve been a sucker for interesting movie and television soundtracks since the late Seventies. It’s hard to tell if the Epic Score crew is responsible for a particular feel in soundtracks (the group’s work is regularly heard in movie trailers and game demos) or if it’s highlighting existing trends, but you’ll swear that you’ve heard at least one track in a big movie within the last ten years. Either way, the most recent hybrid action album, Prometheus Rising, is quite handy in the gallery as background music while sculpting and painting, and the album Distorted, Vol 1 is a perfect soundtrack for weeding in the greenhouse.

Back in the 1980s, a regular joke among political science majors was that every major advance in weapons technology was sold as a way to make us all safe from the previous advance, culminating with what the Texas comedian Bill Hicks referred to as “Musket repellent!” Mass media work much the same way, but sometimes they go a bit backwards, like a river in flood seeking a new path. The original evolutionary progression from cave paintings was supposed to run from print to Web site to blog to social media posting, all forgetting that the gatekeepers in charge of each new medium had control until they were either supplanted or bypassed. Every single time, they were supplanted and bypassed by what seemed like a fad or frippery until it was far too late to do anything, and many of those fads and fripperies were misidentified as backwards. From that decay grew new verdance, covering the wreckage of the institutions that assumed they would survive it all. Evening newspapers, video rental stores, CD-ROM magazines, GeoCities, MySpace: the vast majority of those wrecks are ones that could have kept going if they hadn’t either assumed that they could tell customers how information was to be consumed or didn’t think this made a difference. Every single time, it didn’t seem like a pushback so much as a gradual retreat: tsunamis generally aren’t big overwhelming waves but a sudden rise in the ocean, and by the time you notice the water on previously dry land rising up to your knees, you’re probably already dead without knowing it.

Right now, that’s the situation with social media: Facebook has done an excellent job at choking off or assimilating any competitors, but it was already a mess for businesses that couldn’t afford the incessant boosts necessary for their followers to know about new developments. Twitter is turning into a specialist’s dream and nightmare, where it’s possible to cross-pollinate with a thousand experts AND leave in disgust because of one Cat Piss Man with nothing better to do that day. As for small businesses such as the Triffid Ranch that just want to pass on new developments without being drowned by algorithms that assume your Uncle Malvert’s contrail ravings are more important to you, it’s already time to look for something new. Or, in our case, something retro.

There’s a lot to be said about E-mail newsletters: a full quarter-century after people stopped asking “what’s that weird thing under your phone number on your business card?”, they’ve become the postcard of electronica. They’re dependable, they’re viewable in just about any environment and on just about any device, and so long as it has actual content as opposed to incessant “BUY MY BOOK” salesflummery, they’re the only form of push media that people actually want. That’s why the Triffid Ranch is proud to announce the opportunity to go back to the Twentieth Century in the hope of riding out the inevitable Facebook crash, and possibly get in some entertainment as well.

So here’s the situation. Sign up for the new Triffid Ranch newsletter either via the link below or via the “Newsletter” page in the main site menu, and you’ll get at least four notices about upcoming developments per year. This includes upcoming Triffid Ranch events and gallery shows, news related to carnivorous plants, and other developments, and will NOT be an excuse for ads. The standard privacy notice applies: your E-mail address or personal information will not be given or sold to any third party under any circumstances without specific written permission. If you like what you read, feel free to pass it along to others. If you decide that you’re done, feel free to unsubscribe without any hard feelings. Any way you look at it, it certainly beats having to sidestep Uncle Malvert to find out what’s going on, doesn’t it?

Make with the clicky

(A quick notice: if you sign up and don’t receive a confirmation email, you didn’t do anything wrong. Between the number of individuals of dubious ethics signing up everyone in their contact lists without permission, and the number of individuals of equally dubious ethics getting mailing lists from elsewhere and spamming everyone in sight, a lack of response may be less due to any error with signup and more with mail servers that have reason to assume any MailChimp mailings are spam. If you don’t get a confirmation within 24 hours, try again, but after checking any spam or junk email folders for the lost wayward confirmation. It’ll be a little traumatized and shocked from being trapped with Bitcoin and Russian dating site spam for so long, but it’ll eventually recover and thank you for saving it from that electronic Lagerstatten. One day, it might return the favor.)