Winds of Change at Our Little House

The only color left to my plants are two lit­tle grape tomatoes

Have I men­tioned before that it has been a long, hot summer?

Our drought finally broke on Wednesday after­noon and we received some much needed rain.

While I’m usu­ally not one to thank the thun­der Gods or embrace the dark­ness, I turned on an extra lamp in the Belle Writer’s Studio and enjoyed the sound of pelt­ing rain on the roof, glad that what veg­e­ta­tion had sur­vived the drought was get­ting a good drink.

Dale calls this the “ugly part of sum­mer,” when every­thing is brown or dying. We have trees that have already lost almost all of their leaves.

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Strange Nature at Our Little House

I read this sum­mer about the momma Grizzly bear close to Yellowstone that attacked some campers while they slept. One per­son was killed and the bear was later hunted and killed. Her two cubs were taken to a zoo. It was deter­mined the bears were starv­ing and evi­dently, became desperate.

This arti­cle, by the Associated Press, warns hik­ers, berry pick­ers and campers to expect more of the same as bears come down from the moun­tains in search of food.

The rea­son, accord­ing to this arti­cle, is a bee­tle that is sur­viv­ing warmer win­ters and killing the trees that pro­duce white bark pine cones and their nuts, a sta­ple in a Grizzly bear’s diet.

We have black bears here, but at Our Little House and in the Ozarks Region, we’ve also started notic­ing strange behav­ior in nature this year.

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Where to Build a Little House

Today, we end our sum­mer of Monday guest posts with one from Mary Brown. Mary has a deci­sion to make about where they should set­tle and build their lit­tle house.

Mary's House

Here’s the post from Mary: 

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Green Interior Design at Our Little House

Green Interior Design, Due out November 2010 

Today, for a guest post, we have Lori Dennis, author of the upcom­ing book, “Green Interior Design.” Lori’s pub­lisher, Allworth Press, has gen­er­ously offered to give away one book before the book even hits the shelves this fall! If you win a book on Living Large this week, you will have to wait until the end of October for your prize, but the wait will def­i­nitely be worth it! Read Lori’s inter­view and sim­ply make a com­ment on this post between now and Tuesday August 24 at 5 p.m. CST. I will draw one lucky win­ner and announce the win­ner on Wednesday, August 25. You will have until Thursday, August 26 to send me your name and snail mail address. Good luck! 

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