As one might gather from perusing this scattershot of writings or a quick walk through my garden, I plant what I like… and then figure out a plan later. And much of my garden is self-referential. For example, I have only one rose in my garden. It is the Dark Lady – and it was selected for its connection with Shakespeare and his sonnets.
I also have a prickly pear cactus (opuntia) in the garden. There was an article in the Boston Globe that discussed a nursery that specialized in such plants. So I wandered over there and purchased one. It has had an unusual life in the garden. While still in the pot, it was rudely attacked by a squirrel who chewed off several of the “pads” or nostle. I found them littered on the ground. Being a somewhat lazy gardener, I didn’t immediately throw the pads into the compost but lay them close by. About 10 days later, I noticed two things – the pads hadn’t wilted and they had started sending down roots.
Eventually I planted these pads into the soil and watched their progress. They are wonderful plants that thrive in benign neglect (a favorite way of gardening). Every fall, they crumple upon the first frost and look as black and wilted as a victim of the plague. Then in the spring, they revive themselves and by May, they are robust once again. Over the years, they have also mulitplied so I have perhaps a dozen of the plants.
In the past 2 years, I have been blessed by blossoms on the cactus. They are wonderful flowers which resemble a rose.
Which brings me to the reason that I wanted the plant: one of favorite movies is The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a John Ford film. It is a flawed but extraordinary film about the West, the civilizing of frontier life – and also about the power of love.
The story is complicated and I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it. Suffice to say that a prickly pear cactus, mistakenly called a desert rose in the film, plays an important role in stating what a man could not say – and ultimately what a woman had to say as her last response.
For those of us who are John Ford fans, the poignancy of these last scenes is accentuated by the soft strains of music from “Young Mr. Lincoln”, an earlier Ford film. The music was written for the scene where Lincoln sat by the grave of his one true love, Ann Rutledge. The message of lost love is the same.
Which is why these cacti have an honored place in my garden.







In late 2006, Keith and Brooke Desserich were told that their beautiful five year old daughter, Elena, had inoperable pediatric brain cancer. The diagnosis: 4-5 months.





