A hot date

Palm trees are everywhere in Abu Dhabi. In parks, along streets, in back yards, on medians. This is slightly illusive, as the island was anything but an oasis 50 years ago, but they provide much-needed shade and are pretty, which counts for a lot in my book. ("Random Observations on Greenery," Gerry Doyle, 2009)

Maybe the best thing about them, though, is that they bear fruit. Dates, specifically. In fact, the government here has a massive program that rewards innovative date-growing techniques, and there is an annual date festival at the Liwa Oasis. Feel free to make a match.com joke here.

So I thought, hey, there is free food growing in the streets.

What's with the random non-palm tree? We may never know.

That is a picture of the parkway across the street from my gym. It seemed like a reasonable place to start, and sure enough, there were plenty of date palms. Most of them were a bit tall for me to reach, though, and because I didn't have a ladder handy, I had to choose my target carefully.

Low-hanging fruit.

I have to say, under most circumstances I would feel a little self-conscious about picking public fruit in, well, public. But I was the only one on the parkway--it being in the middle of the day, when only an idiot would be hanging out in direct sunlight--and at any rate, I don't think anyone would care. They're there for the picking.

Sustenance? Or a horribly bad idea?

So how does this story end? I went home, washed the dates and ate some. They tasted like... dates. And since it has been almost 24 hours now with no horrible afflictions being visited upon me, I think we have to consider this experiment* a success.

*credit to "Karl" for suggesting I try this.