Springtime in Saudi Arabia

Not many people would associate much with Saudi Arabia other than sand and heat when it comes to climate. The truth is that Saudi Arabia is indeed hot for a significant part of the year. And I do mean REALLY hot. The desert has many areas with sand but you are likely to find much more rock and gravel. What you might not think of when you think of Saudi is plants and green areas.
In southern Saudi Arabia there a mountains that get enough rain to stay green all year long and there are the proverbial Oasis areas too. Riyadh in its current form is neither. In the earliest incarnations of this city there was enough of a water source to support a population of about 10,000 people. The advent of oil brought wealth of an unimagined scale and that money was spent on desalinization plants where sea water is turned into potable water and piped by the millions of gallons a day 280 miles from Dammam to Riyadh. To give an indication of how much water is needed, know that this city has about 4.5 million people and is expected to double in size in the next ten years. In fact, Riyadh uses more water to water the 3 million palm trees than the city of Jeddah uses in an entire year for all purposes.
I am proud to say that our compound contributes heavily to this water usage. Chris and I walk around the compound most evenings and realized how green our living space is. All houses have shrubs to offer privacy and a grassed front lawn, big enough to say you have grass but not big enough that mowing would take longer than two minutes. When we walk around, there are different types of trees in every yard. Some of the trees include some types of willows, palm trees, date palms, and citrus trees. There are various types of flowering trees that have beautiful blossoms and other trees that produce pods that we thought might be vanilla pods but are not.
Of particular interest to us are the date and lime trees. Dates grow in clusters similar to grapes and are incredibly thick and hang down from the top of the trees. Most people that want to harvest the dates will put a bag around the dates a month or so prior to harvest to prevent birds from eating them. I have no clue if the compound will want to cover the dates as some of the clusters are at least 30 feet in the air. We also like the lime trees which are completely loaded with limes and will offer us a great opportunity to make lime aid.
Who said Saudi Arabia isn’t green.