Big news at Sundews Etc. HQ

Hi everybody, this post is mostly about me, rather than the plants, which is not what I usually like to post about. Don't worry though, I've got some pictures of some of my plants to spruce things up!

First of all, I'm about to head to the ICPS Conference in London! I'm very excited to go meet other weird obsessives from around the globe.

The Drosera graomogolensis look rad as heck right now.

I'll be in London next weekend for the conference, and then my girlfriend and I are going to spend a week in Germany futzing about for the hell of it. I'm quite excited, and will make sure to take pictures/video of the event. My great dream is a selfie with Sir David Attenborough, but we'll have to see.

The second bit of news is a bit bigger, and is part of the reason that I've been posting somewhat less frequently in the last several months. I'm now a carnivorous plant professional working at Predatory Plants!

Drosera burmannii Gunung Keledang look very alien and cool.

Specifically, I'm the Director of Retail Operations, which means I do online order fulfillment, work the plant show circuit, and do propagation and greenhouse work whenever I can find a spare second. Basically I now think about plants all day long, almost to the exclusion of other concerns. It's very exciting – and very, very unexpected – to have begun something of a career in carnivorous plants, especially considering I bought my first Drosera capensis less than 3 years ago.

Utricularia praelonga still blooming up a storm.

In point of fact, I've been working at Predatory Plants since November. At first it was part time (after I left my last job), and then it became full time, but it wasn't clear that it would be a permanent position. Luckily, things have been going quite well in expanding the business, and well here we are. My family is deeply confused about what my life has become.

This is Drosera adelae Giant form, and it's actually genuinely giant. Wow!

What does this mean for the blog and Instagram? Well, I might not post quite as often, if only because after a long day in a hot greenhouse I can barely manage to keep my personal plants watered, much less documented and blogged about. However, now that everything's all official I'll be able to post about work stuff as well, some of which is quite cool. I'm still trading and selling my own seeds and gemmae, but I may occasionally post links to fun stuff that we're selling on our website.

The unspeakably adorable Pinguicula gypsicola × moctezumae at work.

Thanks to all of you who read the blog, and who have commented and emailed about how much you enjoy it. I had been in a bit of a post-college slump/depression for a bit when I started collecting sundews, and then started blogging about it. It really got me out of my funk, and now it's gotten me a very strange and fun job. Life is very weird and cool! So are carnivorous plants, I guess.