I posted nothing. I simply let the conversation happen. Frances, however, posted one final comment before the post was deleted. It said, "Carolina Reapers are available at most garden centers and are a delight to grow. I highly recommend them."
14 people liked that comment. The formal notice and after Gary received his formal HOA notice the following Wednesday. It cited section 8, clause D of the Willowbrook Estate CC&Rs, the provision regarding respect for neighboring private property, and formally documented the board's finding that he had accessed a neighboring property without authorization on multiple occasions. It warned that future violations would result in fines and potential referral to civil authorities. He did not appeal the notice.
I know he received it because his behavior changed immediately and completely. The step ladder disappeared from its spot along his fence line. I could see the top of it from my yard when it was there, and it was gone within 24 hours of the notice being delivered. More significantly, that fall Gary knocked on my front door. I opened the door.
He looked at me with the expression of a man who has about something for a long time and has arrived somewhere he did not expect to arrive. He said, "How many years did I take from your garden?" I said, "I know of incidents going back to year two, so four years." He said, "The peaches." I said, "47 peaches, three years of work."
He said, "I'm sorry." He said it the way people say it when they mean it, not the quick reflexive apology that is really just social management, but the kind that has some weight behind it, some actual reckoning. I looked at him. I said, "Gary, you ate fruit out of my garden for four years without once thinking about what it cost me to grow it. Not just in money, in time, in care, in the particular investment you make in a living thing that you are trying to help survive.
Do you understand that?" He said, "I think I understand it better now than I did before." I said, "The peppers helped with that understanding." He said, "They did, yeah." A pause.
He said, "I didn't know they were peppers. I genuinely thought they were tomatoes." I said, "I know." He said, "Did you know I would mistake them?" I said, "I grew them in a bed where you had been helping yourself to tomatoes for years.
I thought there was a reasonable chance." He said, "That's pretty calculated." I said, "Gary, I have a degree in biology, 31 years of teaching science, and 4 years of being robbed from. I am capable of a certain level of calculation." He looked at me for a long moment, then he said something that surprised me.