Category Archives: Out and About

A Visit to Jerry’s – June 2015

Posted on June 21, 2015 | 9 comments

Earlier this month my carni-bro Kinjie and I had the pleasure of visiting Jerry Addington. (Ron, great seeing you too!) It is always an honor and a joy spending time with Jerry. No matter how much time I spend there – I simply can not comprehend the amount of botanical beauty and badassery that is present. I won’t even try to describe it – so hope you enjoy a few photos from this visit!

Highlight photo reel in the post below, full photo set in the slideshow. Check out the full Screen slideshow here.) Enjoy!

And Jerry – as always, thank you for your generosity and kindness. Thank you for being an inspiration to me and to so many others. You’re awesome man.

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(Full Screen slideshow here.)
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Addington June 2015 Jerry. And that shirt tho.

Addington June 2015-340 Trophy house.

Kinjie and Ron admiring the plants.

Addington June 2015-52

Addington June 2015-26

Addington June 2015-17

Addington June 2015-21

Addington June 2015-40

Addington June 2015-44

Addington June 2015-63

Addington June 2015-71

Addington June 2015-86

Addington June 2015-122

Addington June 2015-137

Addington June 2015-165

Addington June 2015-190

Addington June 2015 5:37 AM at Jerry’s. Beauty.

Addington June 2015-212

Addington June 2015-296 Kinjie in effect.

Addington June 2015-216 Ugh. I just love this leuco! Short stubby lid, and it’s pubescent!

Addington June 2015-225

Addington June 2015-295

Addington June 2015-254

Addington June 2015-287 This one is for you, Jenn.

Addington June 2015-268

Addington June 2015-293

Addington June 2015-311

Addington June 2015-312

Addington June 2015-341

Addington June 2015-344 Sarracenia on the road – Mt. Shasta in the back ground!

Addington June 2015 Had to share this shot. On the road back home, we were in Shasta County somewhere. It was 107°F and the sky was falling.

Addington June 2015 #SelfiesWithJerry!

9 Comments

Posted in Blog, Out and About

Tagged Courting Frogs Nursery, Jerry Addington

Garden of Coe – 16 May 2015

Posted on May 26, 2015 | 2 comments

Back on 16 May 2015, I had the pleasure of visiting my bro Kinjie’s garden. This visit was quite the whirlwind weekend in the Pacific North West (PNW.) I managed to see both Kinjie as well as my friend, Derek in a time span of about 24 hours before heading back to the SF Bay Area. This mos’ def was not enough time! Kinjie has a brilliant collection of Sarracenia and I’m honored to have been able to witness his garden in person. (Kinjie, Allison and Siri – thanks for having me over!)

Hope you enjoy a few of these photos from the Garden of Coe!

Garden of Coe – 16 May 2015 – view in full screen.

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A man and his plants.

Coe 16 May 2015 Oh Hai!

Coe 16 May 2015

2 Comments

Posted in Blog, Out and About

Tagged BruthaFromAnothaMutha, Coe, darlingtonia, Kinjie, North American, Pitcher Plant, Sarracenia

Collection Surfing: Day 3 of 3

Posted on April 22, 2015 | 3 comments

The final installment of this trilogy of vignettes takes to the wonderful garden of Martinez. Drew’s collection is beautiful madness, and his space usage (especially in the Nepenthes houses) is very efficient. As an added bonus, the great Sarracenia artist himself, the legend — Phil Faulisi accompanied us on this visit to Drew’s place too! We had a great day simply immersing ourself in botanical bliss. This was one memorable weekend filled with carnivorous plant wonder. I seriously could use more weekends like this.

Drew and Selina, thank you so much for hosting us. Really appreciate you taking time out of your day to give us a tour of your amazing collection! You both are awesome.

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Carnivorous Garden of Drew Martinez – View in fullscreen

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Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 12 Apr 2015 Pitcher plant powwow.

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 12 Apr 2015 A plethora of Sarracenia flowers.

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 12 Apr 2015
In that company of Sarracenia flowers, a couple gems stood out. This S. purpurea ssp. venosa var. burkii f. luteola immediately caught my eye. Not just because it was anthocyanin free, but check the flowers out. It’s missing the umbrella shaped style! (See this as a reference of Sarracenia flower parts.) So weird! All the flowers on it were this way. After I pointed it out, Drew called it “Freakshow.” So cool. I love them freaks! This plant originated from a batch of seed grown plants from Chris Gussman. (Great work, Chris!) I recognized the shape and knew straight away it was from Chris since I have one too. 🙂 Mine hasn’t bloomed yet so not sure if this trait is also expressed in the siblings.

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 12 Apr 2015 Here’s a shot of one of the flowers from that strange luteola…

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 12 Apr 2015 …and of the other flower. If you see past the petals, there’s no umbrella! Go home, Sarracenia. You are drunk.

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 12 Apr 2015 Another flower that caught my eye after the strange luteola flower. This is S. lamentations x leucophylla. Notice anything funny about this one? Check the sepals out! (Again, here’s the Sarracenia flower reference photo.) Typically Sarracenia sepals are separated into 5 distinct sepals. This plant has only one fused / continuous sepal. It was consistent on all of the flowers too!

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 12 Apr 2015 An ever-so efficient use of space. It’s packed in here!

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 12 Apr 2015

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 12 Apr 2015 Phil freaks out over this beautiful N. robcantleyi!

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 12 Apr 2015

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 12 Apr 2015 WOW. Just… wow.

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 12 Apr 2015

3 Comments

Posted in Blog, Nepenthes, Out and About

Tagged Collection, Drew, Faulisi, Martinez, nepenthes, Phil, Pitcher Plant, Sarracenia, Surfing, The Homies

Collection Surfing: Day 2 of 3

Posted on April 20, 2015 | 10 comments

Collection surfing – Day 2, the journey continues! [See prior day, Day 1 – Phil Faulisi’s mindmelting garden.] For day 2 we would continue with our carnivorous plant campaign at California Carnivores where Chi’en C. Lee was presenting on his travels throughout South East Asia. Goodness. To be surrounded by carnivorous plants AND listen to Chi’en present in person on the flora and fauna of South East Asia was most excellent! His talk was fascinating and it was very inspirational. Makes me want to get out there and travel/photograph a bit more! Additionally there were so many fellow carniphiles that showed up at CalCarn; it was absolutely brilliant meeting and connecting with all of you wonderful people that were there!

After CalCarn – Kinjie, Calen and I trekked over to Mike Wang’s place. Yeah! Over at Mike’s place — this was pretty much our reaction throughout the entire time we were there. (Click that link.) We got to Mike’s place as the day was ending but that definitely did not stop these plant nerds from trippin’ out over plants ’till 11pm. No light in the garden? No problem. We bust out the flashlights and continued to get our botanical geekery on. Nightshift status. (Good times, bros… good times.)

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California Carnivores – View in full screen

Mike Wang’s Crops – View in full screen

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Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015 Obligitory bridge shot. Crossed en route to CalCarn.

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015 We up in this.

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015 Calen and Damon

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015 Left to Right: Kinjie, Peter, Calen, some weird guy, and Damon
(Thanks for taking the photo, David!)

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015 Aww yeah! Selfie with Peter D’amato!

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015 (A blurry) selfie with Chi’en, Kinjie and Calen. I was probably on a bit of a botanical high or something at the time of this photo.

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015 Left to Right: Calen, Mike, Kate, Kinjie and I

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Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015 Crops of Wang.

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015 I think Calen’s phone was dead in this photo and that he was just pretending to take a photo for this shot. (Heh heh! Just messin’ with you Calen. But you gotta make sure your phone is charged next time, bro. 🙂 )

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015 Check out the throat spotch on this baby!

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015 Man, these Flava cupreas — so choclate-y!

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015 The Wangster admires a beautiful pink excellens.

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015 Carnivorous plant geeks in effect.

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015 Sarracenia “Elaine Wang”

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015 Nightshift.

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015 Light ’em up! (Playing around with the wireless flash…)

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015 Scene without the camera flash…

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015 … and scene WITH flash.

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015 Crops by night.

Carnivorous Plant Collection Surfing - 11 Apr 2015

10 Comments

Posted in Blog, Out and About

Tagged California, carnivores, Collection Surfing, Collection Tour, Mike, Sarracenia, Wang

Collection Surfing: Day 1 of 3

Posted on April 17, 2015 | 15 comments

Hey everyone out there in the interwebs! Hope you’ve been well! Miss you all. It’s been a couple weeks since my last update, but oh boy… do I have some updates coming up. Thanks for being patient with me and thank you for still checking in on my blog. You’re awesome.

So last week my brotha’ from another mutha’ – Kinjie Coe, came down to visit for the weekend. For those of you who don’t know, Kinjie hails from Portland, OR and is an absolutely friquin’ brilliant carnivorous plant grower. We had a marvelous time connecting and spending time with local growers. (Allison and Siri, thank you for letting Kinjie visit and get his super-carnivorous-plant-nerd-out on with the rest of us!)

I’ll be posting a few snapshots from each day of his visit in the upcoming blog posts. I’ve actually never had *this much* carnivorous plant collection surfing crammed into one weekend. Yeah. It was glorious.

Day one – Friday 10 Apr 2015. We cruised on over to visit the legend – Phil Faulisi. Phil needs no introduction and he is one badass breeder and grower. Phil – thank you so much for everything bro. Always good to kick it with you and many thanks for your hospitality and generosity. (BACON!)

Without further ado – slideshow photos from the master’s garden as well as a few photos in the highlight reel below!

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View full screen slideshow here!

CP Collection Surfing - Phil Faulisi - 10 Apr 2015 Plant life. Ain’t nothin’ but a G(ardener) thang.

CP Collection Surfing - Phil Faulisi - 10 Apr 2015 Tools of the artist.

Collection Surfing - Phil Faulisi - 10 Apr 2015-97

CP Collection Surfing - Phil Faulisi - 10 Apr 2015

CP Collection Surfing - Phil Faulisi - 10 Apr 2015 The beast. Sarracenia “Saurus”

CP Collection Surfing - Phil Faulisi - 10 Apr 2015

CP Collection Surfing - Phil Faulisi - 10 Apr 2015 Whatta bunch ah crazies all up in this joint. We be getting that Sarracenia high.

15 Comments

Posted in Blog, Out and About

Tagged Coe, CP Collection Surfing, Faulisi, Kinjie, Phil, Sarracenia

The Garden of Drew

Posted on November 19, 2014 | 7 comments

This last weekend I had an opportunity to nerd-out over carnivores at Drew Martinez’s place with fellow carnie-heads Mike Wang and Josh Brown. It was brilliant getting together with these fellow growers and talk plants. Hella (plant) nerd. With this time of the year, most of Drew’s Sarracenia were on their way out, but many plants still looked great. By the way – you can see Mike’s photos on his thread on The Sarracenia Forums here.

The amazing thing is — THIS. Yeah, click that link. Back in 2012 Mike, Josh and I helped put the greenhouses together and it was quite delightful to see the houses and yard packed. Drew and Selina – thanks again for your hospitality in hosting us carnivorous plant-dorks.

My camera and one of my lenses are still in the shop as noted in the last post, but special thanks to Drew for letting me use his camera body to let me snap a few shots!

View all photos in full screen here. A few highlight photos below!

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15 Nov 2014 - Drew Martinez
DREW IS THE MAN.

15 Nov 2014 - Drew Martinez

7 Comments

Posted in Nepenthes, Out and About

Tagged Cephalotus, Drew Martinez, Heliamphora, Hella, Josh Brown, Mike Wang, nepenthes, Pitcher Plant, Plant Dorks, Plant Nerds, Sarracenia

Darlingtonia 2014

Posted on November 3, 2014 | 17 comments

A few weeks ago Mike Wang and I visited various Darlingtonia sites in Curry Co., OR and Del Norte Co., CA. As always – I am truly thankful that I got a chance to roll with Mike again. It was truly an unforgettable experience. It was pretty much a year since we last visited Darlingtonia country. (Here’s a post to day one and day two from last year!)

We had to do some hiking to get to some of these sites. The trails (and LACK of trails) were quite steep and rugged in some places. Finding the Darlingtonia in these remote regions was definitely not easy, but the grueling trek felt like a very small price to pay to be able to witness the plants growing in their natural habitat. Oh and the scenery? <Insert expletives here.> OMG. Ridiculously good. Melt-your-face-off mind-blowingly beautiful.

I can’t adequately put into words just how outlandishly magnificent this experience was so I’ll stop trying and let you see for yourself. I strung together a few video clips and created some photo slideshows that are sorted by day below. There’s also a few highlight snapshots underneath all that. Enjoy!

Oh yeah, and if you haven’t already done so – please be sure to check out Mike’s posts of our Darlingtonia 2014 excursion here, here, here and here!

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Darlingtonia Video
9-11 Oct 2014
Various sites in Curry Co., OR and Del Norte Co., CA

Day 1 – 9 Oct 2014 Photo Slideshow
Curry Co., OR

Day 2 – 10 Oct 2014 Photo Slideshow
Curry Co., OR

Day 3 – 11 Oct 2014 Photo Slideshow
Del Norte Co., CA

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A few highlight photos follow below. To see all the photos from this Darlingtonia excursion, please view the photo slideshows above!
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It’s pre 6am. I need to start this day off right. I need to start this trip off right.
It’s all about that PHILZ COFFEE!

The first patch of Darlingtonia that we stumbled across!
FCS Site – Curry Co., OR

The Wangster and I – FCS Site – Curry Co., OR

Seedlings growing out of the water. FCS Site – Curry Co., OR

FCS Site – Curry Co., OR

Above the fog at sunset. Curry Co., OR

Fueling up before the gnarly hike.
The ravenous Mike Wang in action!

Rugged and beautiful. Curry Co., OR

So scenic. That’s Mike in the photo to give you a sense of scale. Here we are hiking around looking for the Mountain Valley Meadow site.
Curry Co., OR

Mountain Valley Meadow site – Curry Co., OR

Mountain Valley Meadow Site – Curry Co., OR

Summit – Curry Co., OR

Haunting beauty. Curry Co., OR

Some timelapse iPhoneography happening here.
An iPhone Gorillapod comes in handy.

Trailside Site – Curry Co., OR

Mountain Creek Site – Curry Co., OR

Roadside Site – Curry Co., OR

Sphagnum.
Sphagnum Site – Del Norte Co., CA

Darlingtonia growing in sphagnum.
Sphagnum Site – Del Norte Co., CA.

Skeleton.
Sphagnum Site – Del Norte Co., CA

Darlingtonia seed Pod.
Sphagnum Site – Del Norte Co., CA

Red.
Alpine Farms – Del Norte Co., CA

Alpine Farms – Del Norte Co., CA

Seedlings!
Alpine Farms – Del Norte Co., CA

Goldmine Site – Del Norte Co., CA

Pinguicula macroceras growing vertically on a rock face!
Goldmine Site – Del Norte Co., CA

Goldmine Site – Del Norte Co., CA

Mike admires the Darlingtonia growing vertically on the rock face.
Goldmine Site – Del Norte Co., CA

Site 734 – Del Norte Co., CA

Young plant/seedling growing next to charred piece of wood.
Site 734 – Del Norte Co., CA

Brilliant yellow.
Site 734 – Del Norte Co., CA

Check the mustache out on this bad boy.
Site 734 – Del Norte Co., CA

Site 734 – Del Norte Co., CA

Left: My preferred footwear – hiking boots.
Right: Mike’s preferred footwear – CROCS.
My mind can not compute how hardcore Mike is to be able to even hike in friquen’ Crocs… CROCS! Seriously. Now that dude is a beast.