Left in Tucson

By the spring of 2007, Jim and I had been together for eight years when we moved from a small historical village set in Somerset County, central New Jersey to the metropolis of Tucson, Arizona. Jim had taken an engineering job with Raytheon Missile Systems in Tucson the year before, while I stayed in New Jersey, getting comfortable with my new job at the recently merged Alcatel-Lucent, a global broadband communications networking and IP technologies company, and waiting for Jim to find the house of his dreams in Tucson before putting my New Jersey home of 20+ years onto the real estate market.

Jim kept up a steady email barrage of digital photos and descriptions of all the natural beauty and wonder he was discovering in the desert southwest. He also provided me with loads of educational tidbits to prepare me for my immersion into this new world. His “Get to know your Neighbors” emails consisted of photos and stories about deadly spiders, scorpions, diamondback snakes, javalinas, coyotes, mountain lions, and all sorts of desert plants and cacti. Jim was adamant that I learn to recognize all the most dangerous and harmful critters as well as plants before my first visit. The plants of the Southwest were a particular challenge. Having spent an entire lifetime gardening in the Northeast, I have always been pretty confident of my ability to identify about 90% of what grows there. I had even gone so far as to earn a New Jersey Master Gardener’s certification. My New Jersey backyard held the distinction of being certified and registered by none other than The National Wildlife Federation as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat. Within our first 2 years in Tucson, I watched more plants die at the mercy of my hands than ever had succumbed in my care in the 21 years that I had been tending my NJ half-acre wildlife garden.

I tried planting herbs and then tomatoes. I missed these from my New Jersey garden most of all and was determined to find a way to make them thrive even in our desert clime. They lasted but a few weeks before they died a horrible death - scorched by the July heat and sun. It’s not just the burning sun that kills, but the heat and lack of humidity. Next, I tried planting them in pots so that I could move them around the yard and keep them out of the direct sun and their roots moist. They ended up with root rot. My one true success was with a $2 packet of native wildflower seeds I bought at the local desert botanical garden. I serendipitously scattered the seeds at the base of the fencepost cactus located by our side-door entryway and in a small patio area. Jim had installed a drip irrigation system in this particular spot, so I didn’t have to remember to water the seeds. By the fall of that year, we had a patio full of an assortment of wildflowers I had never seen before. Bright reds and yellows are the predominant colors of desert flowers. The colors are much more vivid than any blooms I was familiar with in NJ. The colors are electric neon-like against a backdrop of gray-green trees, cacti, sand and gravel, but I don’t think it is just a matter of duller colors in the desert landscape. These blooms really do glow in the desert light.

Excessive Storage

Tucson residents are storage challenged. Living in the desert means never needing a basement to keep your pipes and furnace warm in the winter. That is until February 2011, but that’s another post. There is no need for an attic, either. With no chance of heavy snow to collapse a roof, flat roofs not gabled roofs are the norm. Garages? Who needs a garage in a place where the skies really are not cloudy all day? The problem is that in today’s society, people have a lot more “stuff” than in the days when most of the housing stock in Tucson was built. Neighborhoods built during America’s post-war housing boom of the 1950’s through the 1970’s are filled with one and two-car carports. That may have been fine for most of the Tucson home buyers of the time, because Tucson’s population in those days consisted primarily of retired or soon-to-be-retired members of the U.S. Air Force, and their families, who were stationed at the Tucson Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. And everybody knows that military families don’t hang on to a lot of possessions because they are always on the move.

All those carports may have looked very California cool and modern in their hay day, but now they are filled to the gills with all sorts of household and family junk. I never imagined that people could collect and store so much crap. Why bother to rent a self-storage unit when you have a carport for free?! No need to worry about your stuff getting wet and freezing because this is the desert. Who cares what your neighbors think of the site of your stuff as they pass your house every day? There is not much risk of anyone stealing your stuff, because everyone else in Tucson has enough of their own useless stuff.

Why do people need to keep all this stuff, you might ask? Well, everyone in Tucson is a “collector!” You never know when your collection may turn into a very smart investment worthy of the “Antiques Roadshow.” Thrift and antique stores abound in Tucson. So do pawn shops. With an Air Force base in town and so many retirees coming from the west and mid-west, these places are a treasure trove of people’s former lives.

Fred the Buffalo

My favorite antique/junk shop is "Copper Country Antiques." It's mascot and brand identity is "Fred" the buffalo. Fred is a life-sized aluminum cast buffalo who stands proudly on the roof of the building above the front entrance. Over the years, Fred has developed his very own persona.

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