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10 Aug. 1972

Dear Doris:

I long for news of you, but realize how busy you are with the job as well as your free time in writing. I hope that all goes well with you and you aren't doing too much and getting all tired out sitting up late at night and getting up early mornings. Your health is paramount, and you mustn't let yourself get rundown.

I've been doing too much too, so yesterday I took off and finished with the work on the shed, went to Sears and got paint and turpentine to paint my back porch roof -- the rains have caused it to start rusting. I will paint it slowly, so as not to do too much. I then went swimming. That always relaxes me and leaves me tired enough to want to rest. For an old woman past 80 I think I am doing pretty well to keep going. I came down here, arriving at 8.30 and shall leave at 12.30, so as to get to the pool at the 2 p.m. break for adults. It will not be crowded to-day as it is pretty cool -- 58 at my back door early. We need rain, and I have been lugging water for my squashes that wilt in the afternoon. I have plenty of tomatoes, and shall can one jar this weekend. Wish you lived near to share them. There was a report my plowman had retired from bus driving, so I called him up last night. He said he was just on vacation, wouldn't retire for 2 years and he assured me that he would tend to plowing and harrowing my garden as long as he was able. He had heard of my coon trouble from another bus driver, and said he had woodchucks in his and the squirrels also bothered him. It hadn't been a good year for gardens, and he had the poorest he had ever had. I have a lot of lima beans coming on -- if we don't get a front too early.

Little Dolores, the secretary here, has just come in -- she has been out with an ulcer on her eye and it still looks pretty red. She is a queer soul, she has given up eating lunch with me -- I suspect because Elsie comes down, and won't hardly speak to Elsie who terms her "moody" but I get on prettywell [[pretty well]].

I've been going over some of Dad's papers, and have brought a lot down to one of the botanists, thinking that they should be preserved. I'm doing my best to clear things up for you, but there will be so much that you will have to dispose of eventually. I hope you don't throw away his diaries or mine either. Both of us kept diaries all our life, his short but mine are full of events and if you are a writer you would find plenty of material there.

I hope the book is getting along.

With love,