Dylan and Rachel together!

This morning, we received a call from Dylan. Turns out, he and Rachel were sitting in a cafe together in Helsinki. Rachel had arrived from Boston, and he from Estonia, just a few hours earlier and they connected without too much effort, it sounds like. Somehow, it's comforting to know that. Rachel has a laptop with her and they've both bought temporary phones for Finland, so we should be hearing from them from time to time for the next 5 days, or so. It was fun to hear their voices! They won't stay in Helsinki too long, it turns out, so it's still undecided as to whether they'll have time to connect with Finnish relatives (who don't know they're in town, anyway). Rachel has a friend in Turku, an interesting seaport city west of the capital, so they'll move in that direction in a day or two. They are, at present, 10 hours ahead of us, not that clock time matters to either of them, so much. Most of Europe is nine hours ahead, though the UK and Portugal are only 8. Dylan's been on the road alone, now, for 6 1/2 weeks. It will interesting to hear how their combined style looks after his solitary one. Then things will REALLY get interesting when we join the fun, about 10 days from now. Ha ha!

Today, the weather cooled off by about 12 degrees! From 80, yesterday, looks like it won't move past 68 this afternoon. Lovely! Our bamboo wind chimes have been babbling all day. We are looking forward to the cooler weather, though.

For no good reason, here's a picture I just took of one of my orchids--the only one blooming, right now. It's a little dendrobium.

--Sandy