For the past several years I have
been researching and authoring articles for my local historical society. Wethersfield is Connecticut’s oldest town
with one of the state’s largest historical districts and loads of interesting
stories about its past from 1634 to yesterday – and yet in character it is just
another small, quiet, New England bedroom community.
The
other day I was thinking about the pieces that I have enjoyed composing the
most. And I quickly came up with three
of them – all about former town residents.
In no particular order they concerned (1) Francesco (Frank) Lentini, a
three-legged man who lived up the street in my neighborhood in the 1920s and
was a world-famous sideshow performer (”freak”) traveling the world as “The
Great Lentini”; (2) William Watson Andrews, a 19th century founder of the
Catholic Apostolic Church: which considered itself the one true church;
believed other Christian religion were evil; and was considered blasphemous by
mainstream Christianity – yet, he was a prominent town citizen, and an active
preacher at Wethersfield's Congregational Church while simultaneously publicly evangelising
for his own church; and (3) Benjamin Lee Whorf, who was both an eminent
American Linguist who popularized the widespread belief that the Eskimos have
an unusually large number of words for snow, and was also, at the same time, a
renowned Fire Prevention Engineer in the insurance industry.
Then
about a week later our Prickly Pear Cactus blossomed several bright yellow
flowers.
Coincidence,
or fodder for a personal essay? I’ll go
with the latter.
For
the past several years, since personal circumstances have prevented us from
moving to New Mexico (our ultimate retirement destination), we have done what we can to
New Mexicanize our immediate surroundings.
Images of the Virgin of Guadalupe appear throughout our house. Our family room wall is covered with
southwestern arts and crafts – prominent among them the “Santos” of Taos based
Santera, Lydia Garcia as well as various “ex votos”. Prints of New Mexican artists such as R.C.Gorman and Pablita Velarde hang in various rooms. And hand carved Zuni stone fetishes live atop
the hope chest mesa in our living room.
Outdoors
we have imported hollyhock seeds and “Maximillian” Sunflowers from our
daughter-in-law and son’s yard in Santa Fe, NM.
The latter proved much harder to smuggle x-country, but we did it.
Hollyhocks
are the floral symbol of the Town of Taos, NM and appear in abundance up against
the brown adobe casitas in that town and throughout the northern part of the
“Land of Enchantment”. To complicate the
transplanting of hollyhocks, the flowers are biannual meaning they come to life
every other annum. After several years
of trial and error, and on one occasion way too much rain, they now appear in
roughly the same spot, per their prescribed internal schedule.
The
Maximillians, on the other hand, are a normal perennial – and much more
reliable – that also can withstand poor soils and intense heat, and each
growing season it churns out large yellow flowers from midsummer onwards. And tall.
Like really, really, tall. Like
cut them back in June, and in September they are still eight feet
high tall. No problemo with these
southwester imports.
What
we really wanted however out in our yard was a New Mexican cactus – which to us
means a Prickly Pear, Opuntia genus (Family Cactaceae). This is something that to us anyway is not
smuggle-able. A couple of years back we
went to the Connecticut Cactus and Succulent Society’s Annual Show and Sale in nearby
Waterbury, CT hoping to find some examples of the this southwest succulent –
preferably without sharp spines (there are such things) and suitable for the
Connecticut climate. Nada.
Ironically
however, the next month my Men’s Garden Club had our annual plant sale and one
of the members (to our surprise) showed up with a bunch of potted little prickly
pear cacti, which it seems he had growing in a little garden in his own back
yard a mile or so away from our own domicile. These definitely had spines. But that is the way it is according to
deserusa.com “Like other cactus, most prickly pears and chollas have large
spines -- actually modified leaves -- growing from tubercles -- small,
wart-like projections -- on their stems. But members of the Opuntia genus are
unique because of their clusters of fine, tiny, barbed spines called glochids.
Found just above the cluster of regular spines, glochids are yellow or red in
color and detach easily from the pads. Glochids are often difficult to see and
more difficult to remove, once lodged in the skin.”
Ouch!!
Mars
and I of course bought one – carefully brought it home – carefully planted it
in a blue “freeze-proof” pot (purchased for this purpose) – and placed it in a
prominent spot towards the front of what we call our ‘sun garden” (formerly our
shade garden until Dutch Elm disease and winter storms eliminated its solar
immunity).
That
was 2014. Now two years (and two outdoor
winters) later we have our first, yellow, cactus flowers. The potted cactus also dropped one of its
paddles, which seems to have successfully attached itself to our CT soil – so now
perhaps our own cactus garden is beginning.
According
to its creator, the USDA, the “Plant
Hardiness Zone Map is the standard by which gardeners and growers can determine
which plants are most likely to thrive at a location.”
Our
brightly flowering Prickly Pear is somehow thriving far away from its designated
zone of comfort. As did Francesco
Lentini, William Watson Andrews, and Benjamin Lee Whorf – who each pursued a life’s
work that should have placed them outside the mainstream of the orthodox
Protestant, corporate-centric, classic New England bedroom town in which they
also thrived.
Which
of course is why the Zone Map is only a guide.
And why, to me anyway, the exceptions to that yardstick always blossom
with so much more brilliance than the rest of the pack that are just doing what
they are supposed to be doing, where they are supposed to be doing it.
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