My life has changed radically since I last posted in 2013.
I left my abusive husband in August 2014 at great cost, at huge loss. We've been fighting in court ever since. He held my belongings hostage for 5 years, including my gardening equipment, much of it damaged, ruined, or only partially returned to me. Now, I've got him in federal court and he's facing Counts on everything awful he did to me and my life - assault and battery, embezzlement, threats, coercion, infliction of emtoional distress, conversion (civil theft), fraud and misrepresentation, and I'm suing his girlfriend in federal court as well, for the things she did and participated in doing to me.
After I left him, I spent 4 years down in southern Iowa and wasn't able to garden at all. In December 2018 I moved back northeast, to Howard County, and lived out among the fields in an isolated trailer alone, through the brutal, horrible Winter, Spring floods, a Memorial Day tornado, and part of the Summer. I was 12 miles from the nearest town, with only 3 neighbors within a mile radius. I developed a lot of self-confidence, additional self-relaince skills, and was constantly using creative problem-solving skills. When I moved here, I decided to transform myself and my life, reinventing everything to do with myself. I'm not the same person I used to be. I'd also discovered I loved the prairie and quickly made good friends here. This area is radically different than the Luana area; the people are imperfect, open and friendly, and I'm only an hour from Mayo Clinic. The weather is more severe here, with nothing to stop the wind.
I started a new business in 2017 with a partner in Cali and it fell apart by early 2019, with him "cooking the books", defrauding me, lies upon lies, and he's an arrogant, insufferable, stupid asshat on top of that. Yep, we're in federal court, too, with 32 Counts against him and his husband, both of them shysters and more crooked than a dog's hind leg. Their fancy lawyer has nothing to work with, all he can do is try to evade Discovery, because every document convicts them in guilt, and they're caught in lie after lie under oath and in prior statements. By now I'm a skilled self-represented litigant and they are facing a huge jury award if they don't settle the case.
Anyways, in August 2019 I moved into a house on the edge of town, and bought it in November. It's a small, funky old house built in 1881, needing a lot of work. An estate was selling it. The cats and I love it here. Best of all, it's on 2 lots, the empty lot destined to be my new, big garden space; the whole thing. 50' x 100'. I've got a 3/4 ton pickup to haul and move things with, so I can make it happen with ease. Still, it's going to be a lot of hard work to get it established.
I plan on spraying and killing the entire lawn in the empty lot, only tilling and digging where I'm planting, so the dead sod with be a natural mulch as it decays into humus. The black, crumbly soil is 3 feet deep. It both holds moisture well and drains well, and the lot is slightly sloped from south to north. The rows and plots will go east to west. Part of it gets some shade from a big tree, I just have to live with that. I'm planting some berry bushes and fruit trees in the side and back yards. Around the house itself, the shrubbery needs cleaning out and trimming back.
I'm building a seedling table and 600w HPS grow light for the cellar this weekend, when it warms up some and I can cut the lumber outside. On the 20th, when I go to Decorah, I'll get my favored Fox Farm potting soil in the big bags, and be able to get my asparagus seeds started. I've made hundreds of origami paper pots to solve the problem of not having the planting trays and pots I used to have, among the things I never got back from my asshat husband. Thankfully, I've been able to replace some of my gardening equipment, and the house came with many tools.
My next post will be about building the seedling table, installing the outets and grow light, and getting things set up for planting the asparagus seeds.
