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87 The Front there are a number of reasons to love our neighborhood, but one of the most obvious is the way the front yards meet the street. There are no sidewalks and there are no streetlights, save the small ones that mark each home’s entry walk. The streets are not straight, but wander and slide, up and down, from wash to wash, side to side, from one curve to another. These features make it all informal, accessible, as if one front yard sways gently into the next. Houses sit at varying distances from the street, and ours has a generous dose of garden in the front as well as the back. From the beginning we employed two general principles to guide our planting in the front: use only North American desert species, and have no overall irrigation system. This scheme has provided us with a splendid testing ground for discovering which of the wide array of species available to us could take whatever the weather had to offer. It is just shy of an LD-50 experiment (those lab tests where at least 50 percent of the population dies from the lethal dose) but it has taught us a great deal about how little care and water some species need to thrive. Learning how often to provide supplemental water for this large and most public part of the garden is a continuing process. We know that not having an irrigation system doesn’t mean no water at all, but I have to say that this crowd does grow on a scanty and erratic watering schedule. In the summer, or when spring turns hot too fast, or during those years when the winter has been exceptionally dry, I water by hand around the garden about once a month. In the early days I used an oscillator at night 88 • A Place All Our Own to cover a lot of ground for the monthly soak. But I quickly tired of its cantankerous nature and moved on to a metal spray head that fits on the hose with a sturdy metal spike to hold it in the ground. In tight spots I also rely on the clever noodlehead sprayer. We are firm in our conviction that any watering that involves sprays or sprinklers shooting water into the air must be done after dark, or at least after the sun quits shining on the plants. In cool weather, watering in the front is a matter of judgment; good rains might mean no watering for a long time, months perhaps, or watering only those that appear to need it. We have found that this approach works well for our front garden choices, and the variety of plants that have thrived on this stark regimen is astounding. Naturally we expected that cactus out in the front would be fine with the plan and that a wide variety would grow there. For the most part that has indeed been the case. But cacti are not all the same; some definitely prefer shade in our area, and a few demand much more water than this scheme permits. But it is impossible to consider a garden based on North American desert plants without them, and we have found them to be a vital part of the garden. The house came with three golden barrel cactus scattered around in various places. We lifted them all and relocated them under one of the creosotes in the front. In time we acquired two more, and they joined up with the group under the creosote. All five golden barrel cacti have grown admirably over the years and now form what looks like a family group, sheltered by that creosote. The two largest are the size of beach balls, while the others range from the size of a basketball down to a soccer ball. There is no telling how big they might get. There are old ones at the Desert Botanical Garden that can hide a small child. But they are clearly happy, and we hope they continue to find this a congenial home as long as we are all here together. Many years after we set these golden barrel cacti in place, we built a small wall to define a front patio and, ultimately, rearranged the front walk. By sheer accident these golden barrel cacti are now perfectly lined up with the front door and framed by the cut in the wall. It is an exquisite sight when we step onto...

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