I happen to love figs.  In Norway they usually cost one week’s salary per fig and they’re wrapped in tissue paper as if they’re very rare. Imagine our surprise today at finding absurdly cheap (for Norway) boxes of figs for sale at our local Turkish grocery store.

And now, crows:

This was a point-and-click crow and it’s not completely in focus but I am getting better.

One minute the sun is out, the next it’s teeming with rain, and then it’s both at once.  If this is global warming it is at least giving us photogenic cloud effects.

Only a fool would jump off that diving board in this weather.   Actually, I’m thinking about it.

A hundred yards up the road, in the barn opposite these cows:

are swallows.  Hirundo rustica, Golondrina zapadora, Låvesvalen, Hirondelle des granges, Rauchschwalbe, the European barn or fork-tailed swallow, at the end of this month they will all one day suddenly depart together for southern Africa.

They are tiny.  They flutter in the wind, blown about like butterflies, and though I can’t see how they can travel such a distance under their own steam, I envy them their dodging-winter skills.  Except…

…why do they travel all the way back to Norway?  What would be wrong with spending a winter in South Africa?