Do Not Tickle

Day 309: The fortuituous timing of a post from Watson's Nursery and the date submissions were due for the Puyallup Fair couldn't have conveyed a clearer message: I needed to make another pass at keeping a Venus Fly-trap alive. My success in that regard has been rather limited in the past, with something like six months as the record, but even at that, it was fun while it lasted. I've had greater luck with other carnivorous species, but lost my last Sarracenia when an exceptionally hard frost dropped without warning a few years ago. I have not been able to replace the plant, but hope to do so at some point because it gave me many years of faithful anti-mosquito guard duty. Venus, of course, will live indoors. She's not as hardy as Sarracenia. One word of caution: she does not like being tickled. If her traps close on empty air, they are likely to digest themselves.