From purple plants to sun spots, nature does as it pleases

Nature often makes the headlines, perhaps because it is something beyond our control, perhaps because we suspect that Mother Nature perversely likes to rub our collective nose in it to reinforce the rightness of the natural order of things.

A similar point of view is that nature knows what it's doing and that man does not. That may be case with an improbable-sounding wildflower, the vernal pool monkeyflower, or "Mimulus tricolor." A story in Tuesday's newspaper recounted the return of the flower, once common in lowlands but thought to have been gone for more than 30 years.

A small patch of the bright purple plant has been located in a rye grass field west of Corvallis. The Marys River overflowed last winter and brought the makings of a return of the flower, stripping away the farmland sod that had prevented its growth for more than three decades.

Some would argue that a rye grass field is more valuable than a purple wildflower. We vote for the flower, on grounds that there are many fields of rye, and few of monkeyflower.

This Comeback Kid of the flower world is another reminder of the diversity in appearance and purpose of the natural world that surrounds us.

Also diverse in its own way is the part of nature known to man as The Weather. Guessing what it will be accounts for a significant amount of everyday conversation and dictates the fate of battles and even wars, summer and winter vacations, and TV station ratings.

Much of weather prognosticating amounts to placing blame. Right now, for instance, weather men and women across the nation are noting that Pacific Ocean temperatures are out of whack, and are blaming recent and expected cooler temperatures on -- you guessed it -- evil El Nino and his ugly sibling, La Nina.

Climatologists are predicting a sort of "June Gloom" throughout the North Pacific that could bring cooler-than-normal temperatures to the region all the way through August.

THIS MIGHT PUT A damper on summer up and down the West Coast, including the sky directly above our homes, according to an account in last Saturday's paper.

Ominously, the story deadpanned the possibility that "there may be a lot more days spent waiting for the sun to burn through the overcast."

We don't know about you, but the possibility of cooler temperatures in July and August doesn't sound bad in a valley like ours that often sizzles day after sizzling day during the summer months.

While some weatherpersons shiver, others look to the sun and see problems that could add to earth's technological uncertainties as the planet's computers attempt to cross over into Year 2000.

The Associated Press reported Tuesday that stormy weather on the sun "could mean celebrating the new millennium in the dark, with a dead cellular phone."

Well, knock us over with a feather. New research techniques forecast that the sun is going to enter the most violent part of its 11-year cycle, the worst in January when computers around the world struggle with straightening out problems associated with the end-of-the-1900s date-switch.