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In the Garden Calendar
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Out the Window The first time we had a summer downpour I watched a river of water out that window as it picked up steam running down the shallow hillside. A good bit of topsoil went with that water as it headed for the arroyo behind the house. A good part of one day was spent watching two javelina slumbering in the tree well and shade of an ash tree. At the time I thought that was really neat. My opinion has changed as the javelina population has increased and they came to think of my home's landscaping as the local smorgasbord. I've seen a great horned owl sitting in a distant tree, a vulture land for a drink of water. I witnessed a roadrunner swallowing a young bird head first. I've seen two or three cottontail rabbits raise their families in different burrows. There have been visits from horned lizards, big lizards, small lizards, coyotes, king snakes, Harris hawks, all kinds of birds including lots of baby quail, spayed foot toads, pack rats, round tail and rock squirrels, cats, dogs and the occasional meter reader, and neighbor have passed by the office window. I can truly sympathize with the office worker without a window. For landscaping I planted a couple of ash trees that eventually succumbed to Texas root rot. I planted a mesquite tree, built a bird feeder and had a shallow watering dish for the animals. The feeder is still there and so is a mesquite and an ash tree along with prickly pear, creosote, acacias and other native vegetation. The watering hole has been removed to discourage some of the hungry wildlife from hanging around and dining on my limited landscaping.
Planting a Living Fence The barbed wire fence isn't too obvious but since it was there I decided I'd make use of a small 12 foot length of it by attaching an ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens) fence. I'd seen the "living fence" before but never had a clue as to where it came from. I don't have any ocotillo on my property and it's not legal to go out harvesting the canes from state or federal land. However, my guess is if one had a good stand of ocotillos and were to harvest one or two canes off healthy ocotillo the living fence would be a renewable resource for anyone in the ocotillo fence business.
During one of my nursery visits for The Tucson Gardener I happened to notice a whole lot of living fence surrounding one of the nurseries. I asked if they made and sold it and was told yes. So I ordered a 12-foot length and specified it be five-foot tall and that the growing tips be left on the ocotillo canes. My intention was to get the "living fence" to not only leaf out in hot, wet weather but to also flower. I also didn't want the fence, if it rooted, to be branching out which I assumed it would if the growing tips of the canes were removed. I must admit I almost gave up on my living fence idea when I was promised delivery of the fence several times and also said I would be called when it came in. I stopped by the nursery three or four times checking on its progress to no avail. Finally I stopped by with the intention of canceling the order but this time the fence was waiting for me. The only thing I can say about the fence is that it was 12 - feet long. The height varied from five feet to over six feet. It was debatable whether the growing tips were intact. The fence was in a roll so I said, "Okay, I'll take it" and it was loaded into the back of my truck by two workers. When I got home, I slid the rolled canes out onto a two wheeled cart and secured it with a bungee cord for it's trip to the side of the house. I was wearing heavy gloves to protect myself. Next, I dug a narrow trench along the base of the barbed wire fence to hold the canes. I hoped they would eventually root in the well drained desert soil. Then I started to unroll the ocotillo fencing propping it up against the barbed wire fence and sliding the base of the ocotillos into the trench. (This is truly more of a two person job.) Moving from left to right I pulled the canes straightening and positioning. A little more than half way through positioning the canes I noticed an abrupt difference in my fence. The canes were closer together and harder to move. On closer inspection it looked like two different people had constructed my fence. Part of the fencing had two canes to a looped piece of bailing wire. The rest of the fence has a single cane to a looped piece of bailing wire. The single canes, which were a little further apart, were far easier to work with. I wasn't about to take my fencing back and have to wait to have it reconstructed. The problem was, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get the tighter woven section of the ocotillo fence perfectly upright. Eventually I had to do a little wire cutting and re arranging of the ocotillo canes to get rid of the slope.
I used bailing wire to secure some of the ocotillo canes to the barbed wire fence and then filled the trench with soil and watered it down. Next I had to prune some of the canes that had broken during transit and installation. I saved the pruned tips for planting in pots in hopes they would root. I can always find a place for an ocotillo or two on my property. A few hours later some of the local wildlife was admiring the new fence. A couple of ground squirrels were running in between the canes and a jackrabbit slowly walked along it probably looking for a green leaf leaf to consume. The fence is not there to keep anything on or off the property. My purpose for it is to act as a living, changing screen, and a background for future landscaping of the site. The Tucson Botanical Gardens on Alvernon Way has samples of ocotillo fencing if you'd like to see it in use. I found three places in town, two of which were local nurseries, that sold ocotillo fencing. The price ranged from about $5 to $8 a running foot. Height of the ocotillo varied from 6-foot to nearly 8-foot.
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