“Put that shovel down!” Brenda Watkins shouted from the curb.

Walter Harris had one knee in the soft Georgia soil and six yellow marigold seedlings arranged beside his porch.

He looked over his glasses at the woman standing beside a white SUV.

“I’m planting flowers, Brenda.”

“You’re destroying association property, and I’m calling the police.”

Walter set the shovel flat on the grass, not because she had ordered him to, but because an argument with a person holding a phone was easier when his hands were empty.

He was sixty-four, with stiff knees, a tired back, and nineteen years of mortgage receipts stored in a blue metal box beneath his bed.

He had planted flowers in that same strip every spring since his wife, Lorraine, died.

Each April he chose yellow because she used to say the garden ought to look like someone had opened all the curtains.

Brenda Watkins had lived opposite him for only six years.

In that time she had become treasurer, secretary, and finally president of Cedar Glen Neighborhood Association, a homeowners group that had somehow acquired a grander name than its charter allowed.

She had also acquired an enthusiasm for telling people where they could put their trash bins, how high they could cut their hedges, and which front steps needed repainting.

Walter had mostly endured her letters because arguing cost more energy than trimming a hedge.

The letters about his flowers were different.

They claimed that a narrow strip between his porch and the sidewalk was controlled by the association, despite being shown within his lot on the survey he received when he purchased the house.

Brenda had demanded a landscaping fee, then a violation penalty, then a special assessment for soil protection.

The latest envelope announced that unapproved excavation could lead to a lien.

Walter had taken that envelope to the county recorder instead of placing it in the kitchen drawer with the others.

At the recorder’s counter he discovered six additional instruments that changed the way he looked at Brenda’s notices.

He brought certified copies home, placed them in a waterproof folder, and went outside to plant the marigolds.

He had not expected Brenda to arrive within minutes.

“You’d better stop before the police get here,” she told him.

Walter looked at the garden bed and kept his voice even.

“Which parcel number did you put in your complaint?”

Brenda waved one hand as if he were deliberately confusing her.