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U.S.N.M. Wash. D.C.
29 June 1972

Dear Doris:

Rain, rain, rain.  An inch of it last night.  I didn't go out to look at the garden, which I have been trying to hoe up where it was washed all the week, but it has been so muddy I would go upto my ankles when I worked in it.  But things seem to be flourishing. - the tomatoes are in flower, the lima beans beginning to wave their vines in the air seeking a post to climb, and the squashes beginning to crawl.  The corn is the poorest, it won't be knee high the 4th of July a the old saying goes.  That needs sun as well as rain to grow.  But maybe I was foolish to plant it, with those darned raccoons waiting for it.  Anyhow if it clears off I'm going to take tomorrow off to hoe things together again.

Your letter sounded cheerful, and I am glad so many good things have been coming your way.  I am glad too that you are taking up your writing once more, and devoting your spare time to it.  When you were little you showed great promise as a writer.  I have kept your little books. they are all up in the attic. You liked to do it, and you were original and charming as a child author.  Go to it, and see what you can do now.  When I was still in highschool I used to draw all the plants around, and make little descriptions of them.  Dad used to prize the little notebook I made then.  But I have kept right on doing the same thing, only with beetles instead of plants, all my life.  Drawing them, describing them, publishing them.  Our natural tendencies show up young.  Only this week came a letter from Honduras from the Research Dept. of the United Fruit Co. asking if I would name the beetles they were sending.  And they were precisely the ones I had just been drawing, having borrowed the type from the Paris Museum.  The U.F.C. scientist hadn't been able to get a name for them anywhere, and they were devastating 2000 acres of bananas inPanama.

George Vogt left yesterday.  The lizard and I watched from my window his packing up.  He is going to live in a trailer down there in Mississippi, and he swears he won't stay more than a year, and then retire and come back here to finish working in his own way his entomological studies.  He is disgusted with the way Agriculture tries to run things, him in especial.  He said that he had managed to save and earn inthe stock market around $200,000 and that with his retirement pay will see him through the rest of his life.  He has been "living on a shoestring" all along with this in view.  I have always been interested in George's research work, and his devotion to it.

Now I must get to work.  I am looking forward to seeing you here when the garden stuff gets ripe.  Elsie said she would like to have you come to dinner at her house, she wants to know you.  I haven't been able to get much swimming in - only twice in June, it has been rainy or too cold and the two times I went the water was so cold I didn't stay in more than 5 minutes.  But maybe it will warm up now.

With love,