While the Triffid Ranch by necessity remains
headquartered in Dallas, Texas, we've been known to make trips and set
up events outside the immediate area from time to time. Please
feel free to check back for further events, and should you be
organizing an event where the Triffid Ranch might fit, also feel free
to contact me.
With all of the other events going on through the year, I'll always have plenty of time for the organization that made so much of this possible, the Dallas Organic Garden Club. Meetings are held the fourth Thursday of every month save November and December, and the DOGC always welcomes new members and interested bystanders.
It's quite funny that the individuals in the goth community who most enjoy gardening are severely heliophobic, but I sympathize all too much. It's also one of the reasons why I'm now contributing a regular column on gothic gardening to Gothic Beauty magazine. The first installment, out on stands as of May 22, is on an overview of where to start in goth gardening, and the next installment, "How To Kill Your Venus Flytrap," will be out shortly.
It's been a particularly poorly-hidden secret that I used to be a pro writer before I came to my senses and got hooked on carnivores. Earlier this year,Fantastic Books published two collections of my old essays and articles, entitled Greasing the Pan: The "Best" of Paul T. Riddell and The Savage Pen of Onan: The "Best" of the "Hell's Half-Acre Herald". Both may be ordered from your friendly independent bookstore or from Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and I'll be conducting several book signings throughout the year.
The first signing event in the TROTS (Triffid Ranch On Tour Secretly) cavalcade is on June 20, at St. Johns Booksellers in Portland, Oregon.
Not only will I be out to hang with old friends and fans of the Triffid
Ranch (many of which are the same thing), but this is also an excuse to
attend the annual open house for Sarracenia Northwest,
one of the best carnivorous plant nurseries on the planet. (And
lest you think I'm promoting a competitor, it's anything but.
Jacob Farin and Jeff Dallas have been friends for years, and I
really want the Triffid Ranch to be just like Sarracenia Northwest when
it finally grows up. If you don't live in the vicinity of any
Triffid Ranch shows, I recommend their plants without reservation.)
The last FenCon was so much of an unexpected pleasure that the Czarina and I signed up to come out for FenCon 6 in Dallas, running from September 18 through 20. While FenCon started life as a science fiction convention, it's been mutating into a pop culture expo for several years now, and the Triffid Ranch is one of the many groups and organizations appearing at the show. As of this writing, look for the Triffid Ranch in the dealer's room, but the Czarina and I plan to do a bit of wandering around during the evenings.
For a while, many local artists were concerned that the annual Winter Art Fair at Sanger Elementary School in Dallas (just across Garland Road from the Dallas Arboretum) wasn't going to happen after Sanger Elementary cancelled its involvement. However, it's found a new home at St. Bernard of Clairvaux Catholic School in the first weekend of December. In 2008, this was primarily the Czarina's show, but in 2009, the Triffid Ranch is coming out for the last show of the year. Considering my rather strained relations with the Church, I'm surprised that I wasn't struck repeatedly by lightning the moment I stepped into the school, and I'm using that as an argument for attending again.
I have to admit that i wasn't expecting so much attention from two groups with so much more horticultural expertise than I'll ever have, but the Denton County Master Gardener Association asked for a lecture in 2009. The date is still in flux, but it'll be updated as soon as I get a better idea of schedules.
I couldn't tell you the names or numbers of guests for the 2010 Texas Frightmare Weekend. I couldn't tell you anything about the schedule, or the parties, or even who's going to attend. I will say that all of this doesn't matter, because I'm already telling anyone making plans for April 30 through May 2 that I'm busy. Really, really busy. Based on what happened at the 2009 show, I'm going to need a voice synthesizer, because my own was completely shot by Saturday night.
I had a lot of fun at the 2009 Texas Frightmare Weekend, and met a simply incredible number of people who had no idea of the sheer variety of carnivores other than Venus flytraps. The booth at Frightmare was interesting enough that the roving photographer crew from Dallas's Pegasus News included me in a pictorial of Frightmare attendees and guests. This wasn't the only factor that cemented my decision to set up a booth at the 2010 show, but it certainly didn't hurt.
Jessie Milligan wrote a generally very positive interview in the Home/Garden section for the October 30, 2008 Dallas Morning News. "Generally" means that everything was valid except the first sentence, which is a blatant libel. (And when the people who know me in real life finish wrapping their ribs with steel cable after rupturing their ribcages with laughter, they might actually read the rest of the interview.)
Andrea Grimes, the only writer at the Dallas Observer in a full two decades whose work caused me to smile instead of gag, was kind enough to write about the Triffid Ranch in December 2007. As I like to point out, while I'm flattered that she described me as "resembling an off-duty superhero", I'm not sure if the superhero in question is Alec Holland or Irwin Schwab.
Previously, while I wasn't quoted in Erin Covert's article in the Dallas Morning News on rainwater harvesting, the first of the Triffid Ranch's rainwater storage tank was featured prominently in Natalie Caudill's photography for the article. Without looking at the captions, just guess which storage tank was which.
When the site went live, Ben McKenzie, famed Australian science enthusiast and comedian, took the time to bring up that it went live right around Australia's Daffodil Day. Considering that I use daffodils and daylilies to gauge spring every year (the daffodils come up right at the end of winter, and the daylilies come up when we're sure that we won't see any further frosts), this was more touching than he knows.
Oh, and Jeff Somers at the zine The Inner Swine had good things to say about the first issue of the Hell's Half-Acre Herald in 2007. Jeff is a good guy, even if he has a thing about going through life without pants, and his long-suffering wife deserves better treatment, so buy lots and lots of copies of his novels and zines.
That's it so far. Should anyone come across other examples of newspaper, magazine, or blog coverage, please let us know.