For those who haven't noticed, you've stepped into the Texas Triffid Ranch LiveJournal, the augmentation to The Texas Triffid Ranch, a carnivorous and unusual plant nursery located in Dallas. The LJ is open to comments from all over, but anonymous or non-LJ user postings will be screened. (This is stop spam postings more than anything else, so don't be offended if your brilliant comment doesn't show up right away.)

The Inhabitants: At this time, the regular cast of characters involve myself, my wife the Czarina, two cats named Tramplemaine and Leiber, and The Plants. We may have additional cast members show up, and they will be disposed of listed as appropriate.

The Situation: At this time, this LJ discusses and sticks with the particulars of horticulture, including news, general observations, and upcoming events. If you don't have an interest in carnivorous plants and Wollemi pines, and if you don't particularly want to cultivate an interest in passionflowers or bromeliads, you might want to move on. I'm just sayin'.

The Rules: I'm remarkably liberal in discussion subjects, but anyone who thinks that this is a democracy will be disappointed. Harrassment or abuse of anyone else, for whatever reason, is grounds for immediate blocking. Start a flame war here, and all parties get blocked. If you want to share a link, feel free to do so if it's appropriate to the forum: if you're trying to pitch your latest MLM scam, it's a blocking. I generally give everyone a second chance after six months or so, but any E-mail sent to me arguing about or debating the blocking will make it permanent. I know most people weren't raised Catholic, but just picture that a nine-foot-tall cannibalistic nun with a metal drafting ruler the size of a Scottish claymore is standing behind you with designs on your pineal gland if you get out of line, and we'll all be happy.

Contact: For various reasons, individuals may have reason to send Snail Mail, and all mail missives are gratefully appreciated. Yes, I do reviews. I also do children's parties, and no, I'm not joking. The address is:

Paul Riddell
The Texas Triffid Ranch
5930-E Royal Lane
#140
Dallas, Texas 75230

Well, that's it. Welcome to the party.

It's no secret that I used to be a professional writer before I came to my senses and quit in 2002. It's likewise no secret that enough kind, considerate, and completely insane individuals have been asking about finding examples of my old essays and articles in print form. All of that coalesced in 2009 with the publication of two chrestomathies of previously published material, in the form of Greasing The Pan: The "Best" of Paul T. Riddell and The Savage Pen of Onan: The "Best" of the "Hell's Half-Acre Herald, Volumes One and Two of the Proverbs 26:11 Papers, both through Fantastic Books.

( More details on the books, including ordering information )

Back in October, I tried a contest that didn't quite work out, mostly because I didn't give it anywhere near enough time. Let's try it again, shall we?

For the last year, I've been hosting multiple giveaways of Triffid Ranch stickers and buttons, and T-shirts joined the list this last summer. We have proud wearers of Triffid Ranch buttons and bearers of stickers on every continent but Antarctica, and I'd like to get them there, too. And now's your chance to show them off.

From now until January 1, 2010, the Texas Triffid Ranch is hosting an open call for photos of your TTR buttons and stickers. Inspired by peridot_rain's photo of a button opposite the Toronto skyline, I'm looking for the funniest, oddest, or most impressive photo of you or someone else displaying either a sticker or a button. It could be a famous figure wearing one, or of you showing it off while bungee-jumping into the Seine...surprise me. Send them in to buttons(at)txtriffidranch(dot)com, and the most impressive (at my discretion) will win a Texas Triffid Ranch T-shirt.

The Rules:

• Send in your photo to the address above before midnight on January 1, 2010. All photos become the property of the Texas Triffid Ranch, and may be used for promotional purposes. If you need to retain the rights to your photo, feel free to ask.
  
• Any photo advocating or demonstrating illegal activity will be disqualified. If you're going to put a sticker on a space shuttle before launch, make sure you have permission.
  
• Please: no Photoshop.
  
• One photo per individual.
  
• Absolutely no purchase is necessary, of any sort.
  
• All shipping will be covered by the contest host, and T-shirts will be sent with the fastest postal rate available.
  
• The top three entries will be shown on January 15, 2010 with the announcement of the winner.
  
• Feel free to spread this around the Interwebs at your discretion. Again, I really want to be surprised.
  
• If you don't have a button or sticker, send a query to the address above with your name and Snail Mail address, or include it in the comments below. (The comments will be screened for just this reason.) If you wait too long, you may not get it in time for this contest, but at least you'll be ready for the next one, and they're free.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. If you don't, then fire away.

Thirty years ago yesterday night, I first set foot in North Texas. I had no idea of what I was getting into, and if you'd told me that three decades later that I'd have some of my strangest adventures in this area, I would have asked you to pull my other leg so I didn't walk in circles. Then as now, it was an odd area: every kid gets new school jitters, but there was something special upon getting into a hotel room while waiting for the moving truck to arrive, catching the local late-night news, and watching the anchorman relate a school shooting in the very same middle school my brother Eric and I were supposed to attend later that week. It hasn't gotten any less exciting since then, I can tell you.

Twelve years ago yesterday night was another occasion of serious import. That night, my now-ex-wife and I re-entered the Dallas area for the first time since we'd moved to Oregon eighteen months before. New job, new house, new opportunities...if you'd told me any of what would happen in the next decade, I would have laughed at a lot of it (me, quit pro writing? That's unpossible!), but the rest would have made a lot of sense. The first five years were a lot better than the last seven on a financial basis, but there's precious little else about that time that I ever want to repeat.

In a very strange way, those two dates intersect through one other person: my best friend Paul Mears. I don't bring up Paul all that much in these missives, partly because he's a very private person, and partly because most of his stories are much better told by him than mangled by me. He was one of the first people I met at my new middle school who wasn't immediately trying to categorize me by whether I preferred one local radio station over another, and to this day we enjoy a fascination with music that will never make a ClearChannel playlist. Twenty years ago, my old apartment was a safe harbor whenever he'd come back into town while on leave from the US Navy, and we still quote lines from The Young Ones and Bottom while in polite company. (The fact that he and I look just a touch like Adrian Edmondson and Rik Mayall doesn't hurt, either.) He was rightly memorialized in the introduction of Greasing the Pan as using the term "It's special grease!" as a polite way of not saying "BULLSHIT!" at science fiction conventions. He put up with my blathering tirades about movies in my teens, put up with a succession of dysfunctional girlfriends in my twenties, and waited on the sidelines to see if my marriage to the Czarina was going to be as mutually destructive as mine to the Nancy Spungen of Fandom. (Much to his surprise, not only has this not happened, but he now has as much to talk about with the Czarina as he has with me. We're both still in shock over that revelation.)

As of Monday, December 7, a day that will live forever in infamy in this little corner of the globe, we mark a full three decades since Paul ran into that goofball with the funny glasses who had no idea what a bass guitar was. To celebrate that time, anyone reading this is invited for a little gettogether at the Walnut Hill and Central Expressway location of Red Hot & Blue in Dallas. Some anniversaries are meant to be savored, and if nobody else wants to head out that way, well, more food for us.

I realize that this is from the Telegraph, so I shouldn't be surprised at the poor level of writing ability. However, this article on members of the Solanacae (tomatoes, petunias, and tobacco) potentially being carnivorous makes me want to slap someone. Or at least grab the editor and shake him until the vital facts left out of the article fall out of his microscopic brain and onto the floor.

Nobody believed me when I related it, but I present to you the last needed ingredient for goth salsa: black garlic. Now if I can just find the time to cook.

One last wonder, courtesy of Indigo Gardens: the description of the world's smallest known orchid species. If the petals are only one cell thick, I really want to know what's pollinating it.

On the subject of events, I just received my invitation to speak again at the All Texas Garden Show at the Arlington Convention Center the weekend of February 26. Details will follow as soon as I get them.

Oh, and while on the subject of interesting finds, I'd just like to note that the Triffid Ranch will be just one of the many proprietors at the Funky Finds 2010 Spring Fling next March 13 in Fort Worth. The 2009 Spring Fling impressed me both for the quality of the dealers and the vitality of the crowds, so it made perfect sense to jump in on the other side of the table for next year. All I have to do now is ramp up everything for the sale, because it'll be on me before I realize it.

I have to make a confession. At several times in the last decade, I've tried my hand at creative redistribution of rare assets, whether they were books, toys, or other exotics. These didn't turn out very well, for the simple reason that just because Some Guy told me the books and magazines in my collection were valuable didn't mean that anyone was willing to pay for them. (I still laugh myself sick at the guy who bought my archive of Science Fiction Eye issues for $18, thanking me for "hanging onto an important part of science fiction history," only to try to sell them all for $25 each through his eBay shop. Considering that I otherwise couldn't have moved them with free beer, and that's with my being a contributor, I suspect that he's going to be asking $25 per issue for a few decades.)

These days, I try to be careful. The Czarina and I regularly hit estate sales in the area, which give me plenty of opportunities to reuse interesting pots and containers for carnivorous plant displays. On everything else, though, we insist that the other give a good argument for buying instead of not buying, because otherwise we could very easily fill the house full of junque that initially attracted buyer notice. Some of the people who make the loudest noises about buying an item tend to turn out to be flakes, as the both of us know, and I've learned the hard way that you don't count on paying the rent with a sale until you actually have the money. I've had at least two terraria and several displays go that way, where the once-enthusiastic potential buyer suddenly finds excuses not to show up for a meeting or who simply decides not to return phone calls or answer E-mail.

That's why I feel particularly strongly about this guy, who once made a good business off finding treasures in estate and garage sales. The Czarina and I can understand: we've coined the term "slummage sale" to describe the estate sales where the proprietor keeps it going for weeks or even months because Some Guy told him/her the value of the items therein, rather than lowering the prices even a smidgen. (And then there's the "Jewyl Sale", after an ex-girlfriend of mine, where the prices on used items are at or above retail prices for new replacements and the sale operator screams at the customers for daring to haggle.) And after being a part of the crowd for the Dallas tour of Antiques Roadshow, with the number of Scooter Store Davroses screaming at appraisers about how their Eighties-era reproductions were worth millions before pitching it all in the dumpster on the way back to their trailer parks, I'm glad that we want to stay the hell out of the way.

I've often joked about recycling beer, such as turning Budweiser into Corona by giving it back to the Chihuahua and letting it go through a second time. However, I wasn't expecting to read about using custom bacteria to convert beer sludge and other food-related water wastes into high-protein fish food. Just think of the ramifications: just Wisconsin's and Michigan's consumption alone could help feed the rest of the planet.

Two bits of interesting news concerning favorite magazines of mine: the first is that Herb Companion is hosting an Ultimate Garden Giveaway contest. The grand prize includes approximately $10k in goodies, which includes a greenhouse, a garden tractor, garden clothes, indoor grow lights, and a lot more. Enter all you want, but rest assured that I'm entering, too, and you're all going down. And I'll keep repeating that, the same way Daffy Duck repeated "Yoicks and away!"

Secondly, apparently things are going very well for Gothic Beauty magazine as well, because I was just asked by the editor if I want to contribute a new column. The deadline? December 18. The subject? Well, we're going to have fun.

Another late autumn, another bout of respiratory distress. You know how I like to joke that "any idiot can cough up blood, but coughing up urine takes talent"? This year, I feel like I'm training for the 2010 Winter Olympics. One should never look at a bathtub after a coughing fit and mistake it for a set in an early Peter Jackson film.

It's not quite as cool as the print edition, but I'm glad to pass on that Craft magazine's presence on the Web has returned with a vengeance. I know plenty of friends should be quite thrilled with this, and now it's time for me to contribute as well. (Anybody in the Dallas area have a first-generation iMac that they aren't using?)

I can't make any promises that the new silicone polymer material Sugru will work as well in the greenhouse and garden as I suspect it may. I will say that I definitely want to find out.

Just in time for holiday shopping, I'd be horribly remiss if I didn't note that the second volume of the Grow Carnivorous Plants! DVD series from Sarracenia Northwest is now available for purchase. Considering what Volume 1 was like, I'm buying my copy of Volume 2 right now.

Okay, so American Thanksgiving Weekend is the time where I traditionally put all of my temperate carnivores into winter dormancy (and not let them out until St. Patrick's Day), clean up the greenhouse, and move all of the tropical plants either indoors or into more sheltered spaces in the newly cleaned greenhouse. I'm quite surprised at how many supposedly obligate tropical plants can handle temperatures nearly at freezing...so long as they're protected from the wind. Oh, and the Dallas north wind is something that will rip right through your bones if you're not prepared.

Likewise, this last weekend in southern Michigan was odd for a different reason. For a good portion of my childhood, at least one day in Thanksgiving weekend was spent with my maternal grandparents, and I remember the weather all too well. For those from more friendly latitudes, the last weekend of November is traditionally when Yahweh, Odin, and Nyarlathotep get together and play games of "Yeah? Well, watch this" with the weather around the Great Lakes. The first time I ever had a Thanksgiving weekend without snow was literally my last weekend in Chicago, thirty years ago. And when I describe this snow, I'm describing the perfect snowball and snowman snow, which rapidly turns into a grey-black mush on sidewalks and roads before freezing to black ice, guaranteeing the first of about eighteen weekends of broken hips, crunched fenders, and a general attitude of "You know, let's forget checking on whether our neighbors have frozen to death and see what's on television tonight. It's nasty out there."

So...I spent the weekend noting the lack of snow in southern Michigan. I don't mean a lack because it melted off during a freak warming period. I'm talking about none at all, where the grass is still green in places and the front courtyard at the hotel at which we stayed was still full of live weeds. If not for convenience stores and gas stations full of Vernors ginger ale and Faygo Red Pop, I'd have asked if someone had been messing with me and just dropped me off in east Texas somewhere. The rest of the situation last weekend was bad enough, but I was legitimately and honestly glad that I wouldn't have to explain to the Czarina why frozen water was falling out of the sky and dropping road visibility to nearly nothing. She freaks out when she catches a blast from an open refrigerator, and Elvis help us all when the air temperature outside gets colder than that.

Well, it all comes to a head tonight. Naturally, it's on a week when I'm already slammed with projects that I have to strip out the greenhouse in the dark. Naturally, it's on a week where we might actually see snow on the ground in Dallas in early December for the first time since I moved back from Oregon 12 years ago. Naturally, it's a time when the Czarina will actually pray for the Big Yellow Hurty Thing In The Sky to come back, because it makes the evil frozen water goblins melt and return to Hell.

You know how I've been threatening for years that I'm going to find a big hole on Halloween and hibernate in it until the beginning of March? Oh, yes, I'm going to do that next year. I'd even be doing it if I lived in Australia.

I'm still not quite ready to talk about the weekend, but my grandfather's obituary is finally online. It doesn't exaggerate how much he loved golfing, and many of his cohorts at the wake after the funeral were commenting that they'd been longtime friends and friendly adversaries at his golf club. I'll share more about him later.

Last night, right after the fever broke, I figured "Let's check the E-mail and see how much had piled up over the weekend." Thankfully, right at the top was a missive from mrbelm, asking me about an incandescent bulb terrarium from Steamed Glass Studios in Kalamazoo, Michigan. In particular, he was asking about Professor Alexander's Botanical Vasculum and whether it was worth the $200 being asked for it, and I recommend that everybody take a look at it right...about...NOW.

Taken a good look? Excellent. The horticulturalist in me is the first to note that the container itself is really going to be inadequate for anything other than mosses and maybe small ferns. The bulb chamber is too small for anything else, and this is a piece that should be left alone instead of fiddled with. Sphagnum moss would do really well in here, but if you were expecting to see anything with additional colors, well, that might be a big problem.

The artistic side, though, went nuts. The Botanical Vasculum has a good Victorian feel without going overboard in that bad "overly steampunk" manner, and it looks actually usable. In my case, I like mosses and small ferns, and have been known literally to spend hours looking over them with magnifying glasses to identify spore bodies and details of the animal life that lives among them. Is this for everyone? Absolutely not. However, for the amount of work that went into these, the price is a bargain if you're so inclined.

Oh, dear: Shane MacGowan and his wife are starring in a new reality television gardening show called Victoria and Shane Grow Their Own. Personally, I'm figuring that a little Americanization is in order, that is, if local boy Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers is open to do a bit of gardening this year.