Purple Finch

Brother Phil came up to cultivate the garden.  Couldn't start today since the ground is saturated from the rains of yesterday.  Lunched at the cafe in town and then took a round-about way home.  I drove through the cemetery.  The village asked that no flowers be put out until Friday noon.   That will make it easier for the grounds people to mow around headstones and generally spruce up the place.  Phil was surprised.  "Look at all of the flowers already set out on the graves."  he remarked.  "Those aren't flowers," I practically spat out at viewing the garish assortment of faded fakes,  "it's colored bits of plastic."   That's true but I do know which gravesites to visit on Memorial Day where the relatives will have caringly placed real flowers.   Phil wondered what would happen if the cemetary ran out of space and speculated the village could 'rent' space at the nearby Roman Catholic graveyard.  We bopped over there.  It does have quite a bit of space available but that got us into a discussion of "consecrated ground" as we drove over to the town hall.  Now that I know they have  outside cameras, that when tripped by motion send a message to board member's phones, I get this childish desire to trigger the cameras from time to time by driving in.   After that it was over to one of the large dairy farms.  He's pumping manure out of his pit along a hose temporarily laid down in ditches and through the culverts in order to reach his fields.  We were  driving along following  the hose when Phil asked me to stop  'cause he wanted to 'test' how much pressure there was in the hose by kicking it.  I did as he asked but told him if he put a hole in a hose of under-pressure-liquid-manure he was on his own.  I would drive off w/o him.  We stopped again at another field to watch two shorthorn cows w/ three calves and tried to figure out which calf went w/ which cow.  The distractions of rural life.