Hey Tea! I did disable almost all of the comments sections on old posts because I was getting absolutely slammed with comment spam. I am in the process (a very slooooow process) of redesigning the site for WordPress, and when I do that, I’m hoping I’ll be able to impliment some plug-ins that’ll help with the spam problem. Thanks for the Irish Soda bread kudos and of course the laughter for the messy kitchen. (Which is, by the way, still Very Messy. We just can’t win, can we?)

I can’t seem to figure out how to leave comments on posts in your archives (or perhaps you’ve disabled them: “get over it people, I’m done with that already!”) but I just had to tell you two things:

I loved the photos on your Irish soda bread post. I’m obsessed with the stuff (second post on it yesterday) and yours is gorgeous.

Also: I was reduced to tears while laughing at your messy kitchen post and the comments that followed. So funny! My kitchen was perfectly clean, until I started cooking in it…

Keep up the great work, you’ve got a fan in San Francisco (with a somewhat cluttered kitchen of her own).

Ktchenmage: Most of the eagles around here are bald, so this encounter was surprising. We’ve got a nest of bald eagles up the road from us, but I’ve never gotten to watch babies learn to fly on thermals off a cliffside. On the contrary, a few years back I was up for a visit and two eglets had been tossed from their nest by their parents (the typical learn-to-fly-or-else tactic) and the poor things just sat on their respective fir branches for days on end. They were really rather timid; not at all like the songbirds around here who fall out of their nests and fly, pronto. After a while, it was almost comic, walking up the road, seeing the eglets yet again. Little crowds of park regulars would gather. Some days, I almost expected us to start chanting. Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly! You can do it! Come on, Try! Poor silly birds. Took them ages, but they did finally manage.

I love living out here where we can watch eagles (mostly bald), heron and other gorgeous birds. One summer we got to watch the eagles teach their babies to fly in the thermals off Saratoga Passage at eye-level from our cliff-top house. Sadly it was in the pre-good camera days.

CC: I know! I really owe that bird a debt of gratitude for whatevertheheck it was doing with its wingtips at that moment. (I hope it knows I’m grateful, despite the whole, um, lack of release thing.)