I’ve been there. Any plant you can think of that isn’t cactus will be dead dead dead in a week. It’s hot, dry and the sun is merciless.
I love the desert. The stark beauty that tells you in no uncertain terms that if you mess up, you WILL die.
Cactus, amazing plants. My wife went gung-ho on cactus over the past year, planting it everywhere. I can't kill the stuff. My neighbor down the street replaced the front landscaping with all concrete, and gave me a lot of his neglected dug-out cactus. I tossed it by the side of my fence until I could get around to it. Not in dirt, bare roots, sat in a pile on concrete for a few months until I stuck it in the backyard dirt. One month later it was all green with new growth, a few months later it had quadrupled in size and had flower stalks. I wish my other plants were so easy to grow!