I got this beautiful letter from one of my engineer vets the other day. It touched my heart so I thought I would share it with you.

Well I really worked hard and the garden is beautiful. The lawn looks better than anything at Augusta, my arbor is completely covered with giant pink Mandevillas, and I am getting two ripe tomatoes a day from just four plants, and hey, it's only July. So after a shower I treated myself to a couple of ounces of John Jameson's finest and sat under the trees admiring my work.

The giant white pine that I planted 50 years ago has these long, 18-20-foot long branches, curving beautifully and with those very long needles. I suddenly thought of pine forests years ago, in fact '44-'45 winter. WE were covered in everything we had and it was still cold. The snow was over our knees and every fifth pine tree looked like a German so we blasted them.

The poor trees just gave up their cover of snow and for some unexplained reason most of it went down our necks, no matter how covered up we were. Then all of a sudden from the house comes a loud TV program that Mary just turned on without watching the volume. All of the snow melted off my back and I was sitting under the trees on a beautiful summer day.

Fortunately I still had a few drops of the uisce bahe remaining as my ancestors called it and I am kind of glad for global warming.