What Grows Here?

I’ve been doing some walking since I moved on camp last week and have noticed a few things. There are lots of plants, and there are lots of birds, which makes me think about a comment made by a co-worker earlier today. He mentioned that there is nothing green here that is indigenous to here.  Hmmmm.

There is foliage everywhere! There are manicured lawns, beautifully planned and maintained flower beds, medians with planters and palm trees, and several kinds of tree, some of them that must be many decades old to reach their size.

When they found serious oil here 80 years ago, this place was sand and rock and that’s about it. As the oil flowed, the camp grew. As more people came, of course, they had to be taken care of and made to feel as comfortable as possible. Amenities like trees and green growing things were brought in. 

Here’s the thing. There’s no dirt here. Sand and rock, remember? Turns out you can grow just about anything you want in the desert if you pour enough water on it. So now we have some amazing greenery all over the camp, along the highways, and in upper-end developed areas, but it is all growing in sand. Walking on grass grown in sand is like walking on a damp sponge – soft and squishy, but if you get enough water on it, lush! Here are some cell phone shots on camp:

 a sideways view of a very pretty flower bed (darned iPhone pix!!)

 sideways view of blooming flowers in sand, with soccer field behind it

 palm tree and grass in sand - the tree seems appropriate!

Have you seen pictures of crop circles in the U.S? Big circles of green where they use the traveling irrigation arms? I saw a satellite image of Saudi Arabia and there a green patch in the middle of the country, near a town at a crossroads. Zooming in showed dozens of big irrigated crop circles – I don’t know what they grow there or where they’re getting the water, but that must be some kinda deep well. The only other green spaces are on the coasts where there are cities, and there aren’t many.

So I will enjoy the green here while I walk around – there are only 87 varieties of tree in Saudi Arabia, and there are a handful of those represented here. The big ones are in the acacia family, and they have some amazing shapes. I have some neat shots on my good camera, but right now my laptop doesn’t want to talk to the memory card, so those will have to wait for another post!