Incubator

It looks like an alien invasion! The hillside on the north end of Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve is covered with little blue tubes. Each houses a Torrey Pines seedling, keeping animals from munching them and apparently each generating a congenial microclimate, too. These measures are necessary because the bark beetles have laid waste to the copse which used to hug this hill: you can see the skeletons.