Family Discourse

make a website documenting a scene that sticks in your memory from the childhood years of your family life- Gregory Ulmer

Our family home sat on four square acres of desert at the foot of Pusch Ridge in Tucson, Arizona, in the town of Oro Valley (Gold Valley). My parents designed the home themselves to blend into the landscape as much as possible, altering the design to keep an ancient mesquite tree as the center figure of the backyard area. My father loved the wild beauty of the desert, insisting that we not landscape the acreage but instead leave it untouched as much as possible. My brother and I were glad of that decision most days, exploring the desert around our home and chasing horned lizards.

However, one night when we arrived home we saw that someone had tried to pry open the back door with what the police later assumed was a crowbar. Concerned about the lack of security and apparently suddenly aware that our relative remoteness did not equal 'no intruders', my parents decided something must be done. Constructing a fence around all four acres to keep people out was impractical, so we settled on a gate on the driveway. However, this left much of the property open to invaders, so my parents decided to build a natural fence.

This natural fence would use the cactus from the interior of our acreage and we would then transplant it to the outside perimeter. This was a very large and involved activity, always beginning with my father calling us out on a Saturday morning with "people, people, people" (see clip). We would then troupe out with shovels and wheelbarrows to the yard to find a good prickly pear or cholla candidate. Walking through the desert for a few minutes usually presented a good candidate for transplanting- a large, healthy cactus with lots of pads. We would take our shovels and pickaxes and cut off pads of the plant, right down to the stump, and place them all in the wheelbarrow. We would then remove the stump itself, carefully lifting the heavy trunk of the cactus out of the ground roots and all. Then came the long, prickly walk to the front fence.

Remnants of the cactus fence 28 years later

The fence that existed was nothing more than some wire marking out the property. We would then dig  small holes for each of the pads we had cut off, digging out any rocks and laboriously moving out any caliche clay. We would then place the pads into the ground, about two feet apart, cover them with earth, tamp it down with our shovels and put a little water on it to settle the soil. The cuttings from
one healthy prickly pear went just about the length of the front fence. After a month or so of shaking our heads at the apparently fruitless venture the pads began to grow new pads on top of them. Within a year the natural fence was in place: an impenetrable wall of cactus that still stands (mainly) to this day.

This natural fence required no watering other than the initial drizzle to settle the soil and urge the growing process. The cacti thrived against the existing wire, growing up and around it and forming an intimidating barrier which, when coupled with the black spiked gate, sent a very clear 'go away' message. We would later transplant cacti along the eastern and western edge of the property. In each case one healthy cactus grew over 15 healthy plants from its cuttings. Whether it was a result of the transplanted cactus or not, our home was never the target of another attempted robbery.