This morning I heard something weird. The sound on the roof was rain. Maybe it is not too late for some of those sheep ranchers. We didn’t get much … so far, but it doesn’t take too much out here. It already had the good effect of washing some of the dust off some the date palms and eucalyptus trees. They are now a more actually green instead of that dusty greenish color. I would like to see the greening of the wadis.
Another unexpected thing you find in the deserts are proto-watermelons. You can see them in the picture above. Those little green balls are the ancestors of the big ones we know and love every summer. They are yellow, not red, inside but otherwise look like mini-watermelons, which is more or less what they are.
They grow wild in the middle of the desert. I would have thought something like a mini-watermelon would grow near water, and it seems profligate to produce a water filled globe in this desiccated landscape, but the roots evidently go down deeply enough to tap what water is available.
Speaking of the unexpected, I just wanted to post this picture from the traffic circle in Nukhayb. That’s right. It is a bunch of teapots around and eagle. I don’t know what it means either, but somebody went through a lot of trouble to make it.
