On behalf of "not going in the dirt" out there, well, there are fire ants out there. A lot of them. And scorpions. And nearly every plant is toxic and/or pointy (just touching some of them creates rashes on kids).
IMO, it's a hard place to live with very small children (lived in a desert with very small children, not easy).
Rattlesnakes of course come right up on porches. My older daughter fortunately knew what one looked like when she found one here on the Coast - there were way more snakes in the deserts than where we found this rattler. We taught her about rattlesnakes at the same time as she used a trike, under supervision.
Rattlesnakes can be hard to see, as they live in holes and just poke their heads out, and are the color of the desert they live in.
So yeah, lots of parents would have to be strict about the playing area until they can landscape, do rodent control, even then, the kids need to be older than these two boys to go running around out there IMO.