Sunday, September 17, 1972

Sept 17, 1972

13119 Hermitage, Houston

Dear Family,

With the coming of September there is a definite cooling of the weather here in Houston tho it may still be pretty hot at midday. The air is still muggy & moist when I get out to water my plants in the morning (as I did this morning — weekday mornings it’s took dark to do this now) but it’s enough cooler so that I don’t work up a “sweat” doing it. This week we’ve had more rain after some rather dry weeks. Thursday there was about an inch here at home (the most I’ve measured since I put up the rain gage on the backyard fence) and there was some more on Friday & a sprinkle yesterday (enough to send us scurrying out to bring in the wash). With the rain the grass in the yard has picked up a lot, tho my lawn still is a far cry from some manicured lawns around here. These dry weeks have kept it from growing very fast but soon I’ll have to mow it again (seems like at least 2 or 2½ since I last did it).

I’ve formed the opinion that the St Augustine grass popularity around here is totally unwarranted — it’s subject to insects & plant diseases, required watering in dry periods, and gros like mad at other times. I think my policy ill be to treat it so it has to really struggle to survive — that was mowing will be minimized and tho it won’t look as nice, perhaps it won’t be the rampant growth that attracts insects & promotes plant diseases. I’m also considering substituting any one of various ground covers for various areas. According to the Texas gardening book that the real estate lady who sold us our house have to us there are several ground covers that thrive around here, with little or no attention and with resistance to the local insect population.

Things went quite good last week here, even tho I worked every day and didn’t take nay days off as we’d first planned when Jean came home from the hospital. Each day has seen an improvement in how she feels and in her ability to start or resume doing various things. Yesterday evening we went to the Johnstons for dessert in honor of their youngest son’s birthday — he’s the last of their three still at home — and Jean enjoyed the evening which is more than she would even have been up to a week ago. We came home about 10 o’clock tho so it wasn’t a late evening. Jean has also gone for some short walks & visits in the neighborhood, thus providing some welcome interludes in these days of relative inactivity for her. Work has been pretty busy lately so it was good that I could handle things here without taking vacation time right now.

The news we get from Muriel indicates that she is adjusting to college life and seems to be enjoying her classes and teachers. As she gets to know her roommate better she is liking her more and I think a good relationship will develop there. Last Sunday she was hit in the eye with a volleyball & her contact lens cut some small blood vessels in her eye, but a visit to the student health service, & later to an eye doctor in Austin, indicated no damage other than the superficial injury. For which we were thankful of course.

Palma & Laurel make various semi-critical remarks about school here, but generally at a lower level than in Calif, so I’d guess they are reasonably satisfied (except for Laurel’s objection to the dress code). Palma plans to resume piano lessons soon & Laurel may begin violin lessons thru the school.

All for now With love, Carl