Birthdays

Today is my brother Martin's birthday.  I just talked to him on the phone; he lives near Freiburg, our hometown. Martin is one year younger then I am, and I hardly can believe that he is also retired.

Right now we are still on the east-coast of the US. Saturday we celebrated Cynthia's birthday. She's going to be 18 on the 18th;, what a lucky girl.

About 5 years ago I had the pleasure of celebrating Christmas with Winnie's family, and what a blast it was; so we were looking forward to this party with Cynthia's friends from school and most of Winnie's family.

Cynthia lighting her candles on a beautiful cake of her favorite colors

Sophie is taking it all in stride.

Our outing today

Today, we visited the beautiful Jenkins Arboretum which is dedicated to Rhododendrons and Azaleas.  All the trees and plants along the path were labeled with there English and Latin names, so we could name what we were looking at. As we were walking through the garden and forested area, I thought of my father who was a ranger in the Black-forest and who would have loved to walk with us and learn the plants' names. Driving around the green, forested neighborhoods here is a great prelude for our visit at home in Freiburg.
At the entrance and inside the arboretum's visitor center are displayed great watering cans decorated by local artists. They were placed around the town in private gardens for several months and then auctioned off to raise money for the Arboretum.

Of course, Patricia had lots to take pictures of.

Hot days

This reminds me a bit of Bangkok. You go outside and sweat without doing a thing. All I can think of is where is the next air-conditioned place, or shall I just go back.
Still having to adjust to the time change, we spent the morning in the house talking and reading and around lunchtime visited Winnie's sister Victoria; she has a pool. It's so green here.
I was not quit ready for the pool, but Patricia sure was.

Aunt V, Cynthia and Patricia getting her feed wet

Winnie, Cynthia & Patricia made it into the pool

My honey made it

On our way home, we came across some young deer.

Then it was time to eat.

A day to relax

We are taking it easy today. After having slept for almost 10 hours, we had some breakfast on the porch and then I organized some cupboards with Cynthia.
This afternoon we visited Wegmans, a great grocery store here on the east coast. We encountered this store for the first time in Ithaca, NY, a few years ago when we attended Aariel's graduation from Cornell.
We needed to go shopping; as usual, Patrica has taken charge of the kitchen.

Patricia is doing her thing.

I got a chance to go for a bit of a walk and inspect the surroundings a bit closer.
Winnie and Cynthia own a new home in a new development about 40 minutes drive from Philadelphia.

Nice, quiet and lots of area for walks.

I also found a bird watching area for Patricia to spend some time.