The Fruits of the Sinai Mountains
Originally posted on August 3, 2016 From spring to late autumn, there is always some seasonal fruit in the Sinai mountains. Wetter and cooler than the rest of the desert, the wadis of the mountainous region around St Catherine hide over 500 ancient orchards. Many are abandoned today, but you can still find a lot of beautiful gardens that are cared for. The Bedouin of the mountains are expert gardeners who have been cultivating a wide range of fruit species for over a thousand years. They had to deal with the shortage of water, on one hand, as well as with the forceful flash floods that occasionally sweep through the valleys, on the other. So garden walls were built robust, to withstand the onslaught of water and to retain the soil. At the same time holes in the wall and channels were built to direct some of the water to wells and small reservoirs. Built from rocks of various sizes, some as big as a car, every ancient garden is a work of art. The gardeners are also masters of grafting, ...