David, I grew up in Denver, CO, and the prickly pear cactus was native there. I now will NEVER, EVER plant cactus or anything that looks like it has thorns. Except. I do have a Meyers Lemon tree that has thorns and so does the bougainvillea. Easy to dodge most of those huge thorns, but I use long leather rose gloves to prune the bougainvillea. Seems a lot easier to deal with big thorns rather than smaller ones.
Now, about clay. I lived in the Atlanta, GA area for 9 years. The clay there is red. Water runs off it and it sticks to shoes. I've never had platform sneakers before! The only way we could break it up was by using a ditch witch and then adding masses and masses of perlite. Perlite was the only thing that would stay in the clay to keep it broken up. After the perlite I used cow stuff and got really good results. The broken up clay would hold water but not excessively due to the perlite.
Now I live with sand, palm tree roots and whatever. Grow my daylilies in boxes because palm tree roots will strangle daylilies in the ground (sand) in order to get to the fertilizer. Now I have to use perlite to keep the soil from packing down in the boxes. Have I done this before??????
