She asked whether the landscaping disagreement had finally been resolved.

Walter showed her the marigolds, now broad and yellow beneath the afternoon sun.

“The flowers were never the problem,” he said.

Rios smiled faintly.

“They usually aren’t.”

Walter remembered her first visit, when Brenda stood beside the SUV demanding that a patrol officer enforce an association map.

He asked whether officers often received calls about private neighborhood rules.

“More than you might expect,” Rios replied.

“People assume calling police makes their interpretation of a rule official.”

She explained that her job was to respond to safety concerns and potential offenses, not to replace courts, surveyors, or property records with an opinion formed at the curb.

Walter thanked her for not treating his shovel as a weapon merely because the caller had been angry.

Rios said she had appreciated his calm response.

She also reminded him that even a calm person should step away and request help if a confrontation became threatening.

Walter agreed.

He had no desire to prove courage by standing in front of a reckless driver or reaching for a disputed document during an argument.

Rios looked at the flowerbed and asked why he had selected marigolds.

Walter told her about Lorraine and her yellow raincoat.

The officer stood quietly for a moment.

“My grandmother grew those,” she said.

“She claimed they were harder to discourage than people.”

Walter laughed.

“That sounds about right.”

Before leaving, Rios said she hoped the neighborhood would spend more time discussing flowers and less time calling emergency services about them.

Walter watched her cruiser drive away and felt the strangeness of the past months.

The dispute had exposed real questions about recorded rights, money, and consent.

It had also begun because one woman apparently believed she could turn a garden shovel into an emergency.

Walter did not intend to forget either lesson.

He took a photograph of the marigolds and sent it to Hannah.

His daughter replied with a picture of his grandson holding a jar full of bean roots.

The message underneath said that the boy wanted to compare whose plants grew faster.

Walter typed back that he accepted the challenge.

For once his next deadline had nothing to do with a court, a bank, or an association board.

It was simply a small contest between a grandfather and a child, measured in leaves instead of signatures.

He put the phone down and returned to the garden.