Heeeeeeeee’s baaaaaaaaaaack.

Oh, I know.

This… this is what I saw when I stepped outside, onto the farmers porch, the other morning.

Side note: Houzz refers to this type of open porch as a ‘farmers porch’, Quora references are all about the ‘farmer’s porch’ and I also saw it written as ‘farmers’ porch’. I have no idea where to place the apostrophe. I don’t know if it the porch belongs to a single farmer, to lots of farmers, or if it is just the place where – if you invite a few farmers over – that’s where you put them. This seems a bit vocational-ist to me, but I didn’t invent the concept (and I’m not really up for a protest right now).

Anyway, when I stepped out onto the porch the other morning to fill the bird feeders up with seeds and nuts and stuff, the little twerp was there just staring through the willow fence like, “Oh, excellent. You’re here. If you could just dump that into the feeders, I’ll be happy to climb up onto the woodpile, leap to the trim on top of the door, balance beam-walk my way across it, hop over to the rope that holds the feeder, and make my way – paw over paw – into the tray.  Hey, while you’re at it, could you also fill up the heated bird bath with some room temperature water? Great. Now hurry your little human self right back into the house because I’d like to have my breakfast. Hurry along. Yes, that’s it. Just go back in. Like… now.“

He actually chirped that last bit out loud. It was amazing how my brain automatically translated it into snarky insistence (to be honest, it wasn’t a big leap).

Dingle Diner Outdoor Bistro has been very busy lately, an unexpected bonus in a seasonal community where so many establishments close for the winter. The cold snap last week brought below-zero temps with some frigid windchill factors. We think this year’s addition of a heated bird bath was a particularly good business decision. The colder it gets, the more steam rises off the water’s surface, and the more the birds seem to want to puff themselves up and spend time there as a group. It’s like an Icelandic geothermal pool…

Made of cedar…

Without an aurora borealis…

But offering views of the occasional distant lobster boat!

I know.

It sounds like the marketing campaign needs work but, seriously, word-of-mouth (tweet-of-beak?) is working for us. The place is packed to the point that I’m a bit worried the Fire Marshal might show up and shut us down. And I don’t even want to think about the Board of Health. This is because so many of our customers are completely at ease eating off the floor and, well, also the ground itself.  And, as you know, the customer is always right. So we’ve begun serving them there on purpose (but you didn’t hear that from me)).

Thanks for readin’.

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