Puzzler...

Well, not very many people attempted to answer last week's puzzler – but everyone who did got it right. What is the middle name of a former U.S. Senator who started his career as a gambling judge, and ended it as a shamed, alcoholic Senator? The answer is Raymond, as in Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy.

This week's puzzler is back to science. In the chaparral where I live, it's very common – normal, in fact – to find large areas where most of the commonest plants (manzanita, ceonothus, etc.) have a very narrow distribution of size. For instance, where I live nearly all of the manzanita specimens are between 4 and 8 feet high. In most other plant communities, you'll find a much broader distribution of sizes. Why are chaparral plants so uniform in size?

In The Clouds...

That's where we are this morning – and no, we haven't gone on a trip. The latest rain storm has apparently arrived, and our house is now in the clouds. We can just barely see across the valley, and a heavy mist is wetting everything in sight. Sometimes it's drizzling very softly. Every leaf is covered with droplets; very beautiful.

Chaparral in the mist...