Brian Paul Strohm

Twenty years ago, a tornado changed the lives of me and my family.  My little brother, Brian, was taken from us in that tornado at the young age of 12 years old.  His memory is still very strong and I think about him often.  It really only feels like yesterday that we were playing Nintendo together after school waiting for my dad to get home from work so that we could go outside to play with our friends.

Brian and I were very close and spent a lot of time together having fun or fighting as brothers and sisters do.  We always had our own room, but I would always sneak into his room to fall asleep while talking to each other and playing games.  He was always being goofy and making people laugh.  We always turned to each other when we had problems we didn't want to share with our parents right away.

Some favorite memories of mine:

-One evening at the dinner table he was acting up and my mom's boyfriend told him if he didn't straighten up, he'd dump his bowl of pudding on his head.  Brian didn't believe him, so he kept doing what he was doing.  Jim picked up the bowl and dumped it on his head.  We all were quiet for a minute, then we could stop laughing.  He got the nickname "Pudding Head" for a while.

-The first serious crush my brother had was in junior high.  He came to me one day and asked what he should wear to school the day he decided he was going to talk to her.  I was all about dressing him in slacks and a sweater vest.  My brother did not dress that way normally; he was all about t-shirts and sweatpants.

-We rode our bikes pretty far to the local swimming pool in Overbrook, KS everyday the summer before the tornado.  We had to ride on a dirt road before we got to the paved road into town.  Right before the paved road, we had to go pass a house with a big dog that would chase us.  It was really scary the first couple of times it happened, but then we started working up speed before the house to get away from the dog faster.  Ready, set, go!  And, we would ride so hard and fast until we got pass the dog.

-Brian loved baseball and collected baseball cards.

Please feel free to post your memories.

Mammoth Lakes, CA

Mike and I went up to Mammoth Lakes for a blues festival a couple of weeks ago.  We decided to go on this camping trip with some people from Meet Up mainly to check out Mammoth for the first time.  Mammoth is so pretty and it smelled so good because of the pine trees.  We hiked the Devils Postpile National Monument on Saturday morning and drove back home through Yosemite on Sunday.

Our campsite.

Bluesapalooza

Hiking on Saturday

Devils Postpile

Rainbow Falls

Driving through Tioga Pass through Yosemite

Half Dome from Olmsted Point

You can see all our photos here:  Mammoth Aug 2010

Worm Farm

Mike bought a worm composting farm in the beginning of the summer and it was just in time for starting our CSA boxes.  The worms have plenty to eat!  They compost egg shells, our produce scraps, coffee grounds and other delicious stuff.  It takes a while to build up the levels, but we will eventually have a four-story farm that we keep on the balcony.

The worm bin in a pretty shady corner of the balcony.

Spicket to drain out soil matter.

Inside the worm bin.

Adding some fresh supplies to the bin.

Directions and helpful info (click on photo to see bigger)

Our composting container that holds scraps until ready to go in the farm.

Some yummy worm food.

A lot of times, we produce more waste than they can compost, so we freeze it for a while.

More CSA photos

We are still enjoying our CSA boxes and making new recipes with the food.  Here are some more photos.

Beautiful Tomatillos.

One box had fennel in it and we made Baked Chicken with Apples and Fennel

We get a lot of squash and usually make these Tostadas

Our latest box had leeks and potatoes and we made this yummy soup.