On Christmas Eve, my landlord smirked as he told me to get rid of my dog or get out.
He was a trust fund kid, barely thirty, who had just bought my apartment building. He said my dog, Buster, violated the new “no pets” clause in the lease.
I tried to explain that Buster was my emotional support animal, the only thing that kept the quiet from getting too loud after my husband died.
He just shrugged. “Rules are rules,” he said, like he was talking to a child. He clearly enjoyed the power he had over me.
He thought his shiny new lease made him king of the castle, but he never expected his entire kingdom to be brought down by a dusty old piece of paper he didn’t even know existed.
The New Rule: A Splash of Color
The late spring sun felt good on my back. I pushed the trowel into the soft, dark earth, making a neat little hole for a fresh wave of impatiens. My garden was my sanctuary, a chaotic masterpiece of color and life that stood in stark contrast to the muted taupe of our house. It was the one place where the rules of right angles and manicured edges didn’t apply.
My husband, Mark, thinks my gardening is a form of therapy. He’s not wrong. Out here, with the scent of damp soil and blooming peonies, the constant hum of my job as a grant writer for a local non-profit finally faded. It was just me, the dirt, and Gnorman.
Gnorman was a garden gnome. Not just any gnome, but the gnome. He was offensively cheerful, with a cracked red hat, a ridiculously long white beard, and a fishing pole perpetually poised over a non-existent pond. My mother gave him to me the year before she died. “Every garden needs a little bit of tacky joy,” she’d said, and his stupid, painted-on smile had been guarding my petunias ever since.
My son, Jake, loped out the back door, his phone already in hand. At seventeen, his natural habitat was anywhere with Wi-Fi. “Mom, there’s a letter from the HOA. Looks official.”
He handed me the crisp, cream-colored envelope. The words “Oak Creek Homeowners Association” were embossed at the top in an elegant, severe font. I wiped the dirt from my hands onto my jeans and slit it open. Inside, a single sheet of heavy paper outlined a new addendum to the community bylaws, effective immediately.
Addendum 114-B: Aesthetic Cohesion and Yard Ornamentation. It was a wall of text, but my eyes snagged on the key phrase: “…all non-essential, decorative yard statuary, including but not limited to figures of a whimsical or folkloric nature, are hereby prohibited.”
Whimsical or folkloric nature. They were banning gnomes. They were banning my gnome.
The Bylaw Queen
The community center meeting room smelled of stale coffee and industrial-grade carpet cleaner. About twenty of my neighbors were scattered across the folding chairs, most looking as thrilled to be there as someone waiting at the DMV. At the front of the room, behind a long folding table, sat the HOA board. And at its center sat Evelyn Reed.
Evelyn was the board president. A woman in her late sixties with a helmet of perfectly coiffed silver hair and a posture that could straighten a slouched teenager from fifty paces. She ran the HOA not like a neighborhood committee, but like a military tribunal.
“As you can see from the handout,” she began, her voice crisp and devoid of warmth, “Addendum 114-B is a necessary step to protect and enhance the property values of our community.” She tapped a perfectly manicured nail on the paper. “A unified aesthetic demonstrates pride of ownership and discourages the kind of clutter that can devalue our most significant investments.”
A man a few rows ahead of me, Mr. Gable from down the street, raised his hand. “Evelyn, my wife has a couple of those flamingo things. She likes them. What’s the harm?”
Evelyn offered him a smile that was all teeth. “The harm, Frank, is in subjectivity. One person’s charming flamingo is another’s plastic eyesore. A standard, uniformly applied, eliminates that ambiguity and ensures a baseline of decorum for everyone.”
I felt a hot flush of anger creep up my neck. I raised my hand. “Evelyn? Sarah Jenkins, 412 Oak Creek Lane.”
Her eyes, a pale, piercing blue, found mine. “Mrs. Jenkins.”
“I’m just trying to understand the urgency,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “My garden gnome isn’t exactly tanking the local housing market. It was a gift from my mother. It has sentimental value.”
“Sentimental value is a personal matter,” she replied, her tone unwavering. “The bylaws govern our shared space. They exist to maintain a collective standard. The rule was passed by a majority board vote. It is not up for debate.” She looked away from me, a clear dismissal. The meeting was adjourned a few minutes later.
I walked home under the perfectly spaced, HOA-approved streetlights feeling a chill that had nothing to do with the evening air. This wasn’t about a gnome. This was about being told my joy, my memory, was clutter.
A Warning Shot
Three days later, the first notice arrived. It was another one of those creamy envelopes. Not a letter, just a sterile, pre-printed form.
NOTICE OF COVENANT VIOLATION
Address: 412 Oak Creek Lane
Violation: Addendum 114-B: Prohibited Yard Ornamentation
Description: One (1) folkloric garden statuary (gnome).
Action Required: Remove the offending item within 14 days to avoid further action.
The words “offending item” felt like a slap. I dropped the notice on the kitchen counter just as Mark came in, loosening his tie. He picked it up and read it, his brow furrowed.
“Seriously? They sent a formal notice over Gnorman?” He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Sarah, is this really the hill you want to die on? It’s a piece of ceramic.”
“It’s not about the ceramic, Mark,” I said, my voice tight with frustration. “It’s about her. It’s about being told what I can and can’t have in my own garden, a space I pay for and maintain. It’s about them calling a gift from my dead mother an ‘offending item’.”
“I get it, I do. But she’s the president. She holds all the cards. Fighting this is just going to create more stress, and you already have enough of that with the Harrison grant proposal.”
He was being logical. He was being the calm, rational partner he always was, the anchor to my sometimes-stormy seas. But right now, his logic felt like a betrayal. I wanted him to be angry with me.
“So I’m just supposed to roll over? Let her dictate every little thing until our yard looks as sterile and joyless as hers?” I snatched the notice off the counter. “No. I’m not doing it.”
He looked at me, a flicker of concern in his eyes. “Okay. But just… be careful, honey. You know how these things can escalate.”
An Unneighborly Visit
The weekend came, and Gnorman remained stubbornly by the petunias. I was weeding the rose bushes on Saturday afternoon when a shadow fell over me. I looked up to see Evelyn Reed standing on the sidewalk, her arms crossed over her chest. She was wearing perfectly pressed white slacks and a navy-blue blazer. She looked like she was about to conduct a naval inspection.
“Good afternoon, Sarah,” she said. Her tone was deceptively pleasant.
“Evelyn.” I stood up, wiping my hands on my thighs, feeling underdressed and grimy in my old t-shirt and dirt-stained jeans.
Her eyes scanned my garden, her gaze lingering for a fraction of a second on Gnorman. “I couldn’t help but notice that the item from your violation notice is still present. The fourteen-day period is halfway through.”
“I’m aware,” I said. “I’m still considering my options.”
“There is only one option, as I see it,” she said, her voice hardening almost imperceptibly. “Compliance. The rules exist for a reason. They create a harmonious environment for everyone. When one person decides the rules don’t apply to them, the whole system begins to fray.”
Her placid, unblinking stare was unnerving. It felt like I was being interviewed for a job I didn’t want. “I’m not trying to fray the system, Evelyn. I just think the rule is an overreach.”
“The board disagrees.” She took a small, deliberate step closer, lowering her voice slightly. “You’re new to the board meetings, Sarah. Perhaps you don’t understand how seriously we take covenant enforcement. A clean, orderly neighborhood is a safe neighborhood. It’s a valuable neighborhood.”
She paused, letting the silence hang in the air between us. Then she gave me another one of those bloodless smiles. “It would be a real shame if this simple violation had to escalate into fines. That gets so… unpleasant for everyone.”
She turned without another word and continued her walk, her posture immaculate, her stride measured. I stood there, my hands clenched into fists, watching her go. This was no longer a disagreement. It was a threat.
The Lines Are Drawn: The Fine Print
Mark was right about one thing: I didn’t need the stress. But backing down now felt like letting a bully win. My work involved dissecting dense federal guidelines and finding the wiggle room in bureaucratic language. I decided to apply my professional skills to my personal life.
That night, after Mark and Jake were asleep, I excavated the three-inch binder of HOA Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions from the filing cabinet. Armed with a highlighter and a pot of coffee, I started reading. It was a masterclass in tedious legalese, a document designed to be agreed to, not understood.
I read about lawn height requirements, approved fence materials, and the exact shade of beige our front doors were supposed to be. But I wasn’t looking for the rules; I was looking for the rules about the rules. How they were made. How they were passed.
Around 2 a.m., I found it. Article IX, Section 4: Amending the Bylaws. “Any new addendum affecting the aesthetic standards of private property exteriors must be presented in writing to all homeowners no less than thirty (30) days prior to the board meeting at which the vote is to be held.”
I sat back, my heart thumping. The letter about Addendum 114-B had arrived in the mail exactly eight days before the meeting. Not thirty.
It was a small thing. A procedural hiccup. But in the world of grants and contracts I lived in, a missed deadline, a procedural error, was enough to invalidate everything. It wasn’t a silver bullet, but it was ammunition. It was a foothold.
A Petition and a Cold Shoulder
The next step was to see if I was actually on an island. It’s one thing to fight a lonely battle; it’s another to lead a small rebellion. I spent an evening drafting a simple petition, not demanding the rule be abolished, but formally requesting the board review its implementation based on the procedural error I’d found. It was polite, reasonable, and rooted in their own rules.
Over the next few days, I tried talking to my neighbors. The response was… mixed.
Mr. Gable, the flamingo owner, signed immediately. “It’s the principle of the thing!” he huffed. “My Carol loves those birds.”
But others were more hesitant. Maria, who lived two doors down, wrung her hands. “I agree with you, Sarah, I really do. But Evelyn holds a grudge. Last year my boy’s basketball hoop was a half-inch over the property line, and she sent us three notices. I don’t want that kind of trouble.”
The younger couple across the street just shrugged. “We don’t really have any yard stuff, so it doesn’t affect us,” the husband said, before his wife pulled him inside. Their apathy was almost worse than the fear. They couldn’t see that a rule about gnomes today could be a rule about the color of their kid’s swing set tomorrow.
By the end of the week, I had seven signatures. It was more than one, but a far cry from a revolution. I felt a familiar pang of frustration, the same one I got when a perfectly good community project was denied funding because of a technicality no one cared about. You could present people with a logical path to a better outcome, but you couldn’t force them to walk it.
The Second Notice
The original fourteen-day grace period expired on a Tuesday. On Wednesday, the second envelope arrived. This one felt heavier.
I opened it in the kitchen, my stomach twisting into a knot. It was another violation form, but this time a number was printed in the bottom corner.
FINE ASSESSED: $100.00
Payment due within 30 days. Failure to remit payment and cure the violation will result in further fines and potential legal action as outlined in Article XII of the community bylaws.
One hundred dollars. It wasn’t going to break us, but it was a hundred dollars we could have spent on groceries, or a night out, or Jake’s endless list of “needs” for college. It was the principle, yes, but now it was a hundred-dollar principle.
Mark came home and saw the notice on the counter. He didn’t say “I told you so,” but it hung in the air between us.
“A hundred bucks,” he said, his voice flat. “Sarah, this is getting real. The next one will be two hundred. Then four hundred. That’s how they do it. They bleed you dry until you give up.”
“It’s a bluff,” I insisted, though my own conviction was wavering. “She’s trying to scare me.”
“And it’s working on me,” he admitted quietly. “I support you, you know I do. But I don’t want to drain our savings fighting over a garden gnome.”
The conversation ended there, unresolved. That night, I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, the joy of the fight curdling into the sour taste of anxiety. The stakes were no longer just pride and principle. Now they had a price tag.
A Glimmer of a Past
On Saturday, I was heading out to my car when I saw Mr. Henderson tending the small, immaculate flowerbed in front of his condo. He was one of the original owners in the development, a kind widower in his eighties who had been on the HOA board years ago, before, as he put it, “it got so serious.”
“Morning, Sarah,” he said, smiling from beneath a floppy straw hat.
“Morning, Mr. Henderson. Your petunias look lovely.”
“Ah, they’re a bit of work, but they keep me busy.” He leaned on his trowel and looked at me, his eyes gentle. “I heard about your troubles with Evelyn.”
I sighed. “Is it that obvious?”
“In a neighborhood this size, everything is obvious.” He paused, looking over at Evelyn’s house down the street. It was a mirror image of my own, but her yard was a sterile expanse of perfectly edged, unnaturally green turf. No flowers, no bushes, no life. Just lawn.
“You know,” he said, his voice dropping conspiratorially, “she wasn’t always like this. Her husband, Robert, he was the one obsessed with order. He was a landscape architect. A real artist, but very particular. Hated anything out of place. He used to say a chaotic yard was a sign of a chaotic mind.”
He shook his head slowly. “After he passed from his heart attack a few years back, it’s like she absorbed all his rigidity. It’s like she’s trying to keep his memory alive by making the whole neighborhood into one of his designs. It’s sad, really.”
I looked from Mr. Henderson’s vibrant, colorful flowerbed to Evelyn’s barren green lawn. It didn’t excuse her behavior, but for the first time, I saw a flicker of something behind the iron facade. A hint of a reason, however warped. It wasn’t just a power trip. It was a memorial.
As I got into my car, I saw Evelyn step out her front door to collect her mail. She saw me talking to Mr. Henderson. Her eyes narrowed, and she gave me a look that was cold, sharp, and full of promise. The promise of retaliation.
Escalation: The Certified Letter
The next letter wasn’t left in the mailbox. It required a signature. The mail carrier handed me the green certified mail slip with a sympathetic look. My hand trembled as I signed for the envelope. I knew, instinctively, that this was the next level.
I sat at the kitchen table and tore it open. The language was colder, sharper, and packed with more legal jargon. It was a “Formal Notice of Intent to Place a Lien.”
It cited my failure to pay the initial $100 fine and the new, compounding fine of $200 for continued non-compliance. The total was now $300. The letter stated that if the full amount was not paid and the violation was not cured within thirty days, the Oak Creek Homeowners Association would place a lien on our property for the amount of the fines plus all associated legal fees.
A lien. The word landed in my stomach like a stone. A lien meant a legal claim against our house, our biggest asset. It would sit on our title, a black mark that could complicate any attempt to sell or refinance, growing larger with every fee they tacked on.
I felt a surge of hot, claustrophobic rage. This had moved beyond a neighborhood squabble. This was a direct attack on my family’s financial security. Over a gnome. Over a tacky, smiling, ceramic gnome that was a memory of my mother.
When Mark came home, I didn’t have to say a word. He saw the envelope on the table and the look on my face. He read the letter, and the color drained from his.
“Okay,” he said, his voice low and tight. “That’s it. We’re getting a lawyer.”
The Lawyer’s Office
David Chen’s office was in a modest building downtown, the kind of place that signaled competence over flash. He was younger than I expected, with a sharp suit and an even sharper gaze. He listened patiently as I laid out the whole story, spreading the notices, the petition, and the HOA binder across his polished desk.
He read my procedural discovery—Article IX, Section 4—and nodded slowly. “This is good,” he said. “It’s a clear procedural violation. It gives us leverage.”
“So we can get the rule thrown out?” I asked, a sliver of hope breaking through my anxiety.
“Maybe. But we have to be realistic.” He leaned forward, his expression serious. “HOAs in this state have enormous power. The law is heavily skewed in their favor. They can fine you, they can put a lien on your home, and in extreme cases, they can even foreclose for unpaid fines.”
Mark paled beside me. “Foreclose? Over a garden gnome?”
“It sounds absurd, because it is,” Mr. Chen said. “But legally, they are on solid ground to escalate. Your best bet is to fight this on the procedural error. We can send them a letter, demand they rescind the rule and the fines based on the faulty notification process. It’ll show them you’re serious.”
“And what will that cost?” Mark asked, getting to the heart of the matter.
“My retainer is two thousand dollars. That will cover the initial communications and negotiations. If this goes to court… well, it gets much more expensive.”
Two thousand dollars. Just to start. I looked at Mark. It was a significant amount of money for us. The cost of this principle was rising by the minute. Was my anger, my sense of justice, worth this? I thought of Evelyn’s smug, cold face. I thought of the lien notice.
“We’ll take it,” I said, my voice firmer than I felt. “We have to.”
An Accusation in the Street
The lawyer’s letter went out the next day. For a week, there was silence. No new notices, no emails. It was a tense, unnerving quiet. I started to hope that the threat of legal action had been enough, that Evelyn had finally backed down.
I was wrong.
I was pulling into my driveway one afternoon when I saw Evelyn standing by my curb, staring at our recycling bin. Jake had taken it out that morning, and a stray pizza box was sticking out of the top, the lid not quite closed.
I got out of the car. “Is there a problem, Evelyn?”
She turned to me, her face a mask of disappointment. “Article VII, Section 2,” she recited from memory. “All refuse containers must be sealed completely to prevent pests and blight.”
I had to bite back a laugh. It was so petty, so transparently retaliatory. “It’s one pizza box, Evelyn. The truck comes tomorrow morning.”
“The rules don’t specify exceptions for pizza boxes,” she said, her voice carrying across the quiet street. A few neighbors who were out walking their dogs slowed their pace, watching. “It’s part of a pattern, isn’t it? A general disregard for the standards that keep this community pleasant for everyone.”
Suddenly, Jake’s bedroom window slid open. “Are you seriously harassing my mom over a recycling bin?” he called down, his voice dripping with teenage indignation.
Evelyn’s head snapped up. “And now the loud music from your son’s room. That’s another violation. Section 5, noise ordinances.”
That was it. The dam of my carefully maintained composure broke. “Oh, give me a break!” I said, my voice rising. “This has nothing to do with pizza boxes or music. This is because I hired a lawyer. This is you, harassing me because I dared to question your ridiculous, petty tyranny.”
Her face hardened into a flinty mask. “I am simply enforcing the covenants you agreed to when you purchased your home. If you find them so tyrannical, perhaps you should consider living somewhere with lower standards.”
She turned on her heel and marched away, leaving me standing in my driveway, shaking with a rage so pure and white-hot it felt like it could burn the whole neighborhood down. This was war now.
The Secret Weapon
That night, fueled by righteous fury, I dove back into the HOA documents. The lawyer was handling the formal challenge, but I couldn’t sit still. I had to do something. I requested copies of the board meeting minutes for the past five years from the HOA’s online portal, a right granted to all homeowners.
I spent hours scrolling through PDF after PDF of tedious, dry reports. It was a chronology of petty disputes and budget approvals. I read about arguments over dying oak trees, debates about the pool heater, and the official approval of a new brand of dog-waste bags for the community dispensers.
My eyes were starting to blur when I got to the minutes from the meeting where Addendum 114-B was passed. I saw the record of the vote. Four in favor, one against. The one against was a man named George Carmichael, who had since moved away.
Then I kept scrolling, moving to the records from the meeting before that one. Under “New Business,” I saw the initial proposal for the addendum, submitted by Evelyn. But it wasn’t just a proposal. Attached to the minutes was a scanned copy of an email chain.
It was an email from Evelyn to the other three board members who had voted with her. The date was two weeks before the rule was ever brought up in a meeting. In it, she laid out the entire plan for Addendum 114-B. “We’ll call it ‘Aesthetic Cohesion’,” she wrote. “It sounds official. We can push it through quickly at the May meeting. Frank and the others won’t know what hit them.”
Another board member, a man named Jim, had replied: “Are we sure we can do that without the 30-day notice?”
Evelyn’s response was chilling. “The notice is a formality. We have the votes. It’s better to act decisively and deal with any minor complaints later. We’ll just post the meeting agenda online a week before, which technically satisfies the ‘public notice’ requirement, even if it skirts the spirit of the 30-day rule for aesthetic changes. No one reads this stuff that closely anyway.”
I leaned back in my chair, my heart pounding. This wasn’t a procedural error. This wasn’t a mistake. This was a deliberate, premeditated conspiracy to circumvent their own bylaws.
She had put it in writing. And I had it.
The Reckoning: The Special Meeting
Armed with Evelyn’s emails, Mr. Chen didn’t just send another letter. He formally petitioned for a Special Meeting of the homeowners, citing evidence of malfeasance by the board president. It was a procedural bomb, and it worked. The other board members, likely fearing legal liability, had no choice but to grant it.
The meeting was held on a Thursday night. This time, the community center wasn’t half-empty. It was packed. Word had spread. The Gables were there, as was Maria, and even the apathetic young couple from across the street. The air was thick with tension.
Evelyn and the board sat at the front table. She tried to project her usual icy calm, but I could see the tightness around her mouth, the rigid set of her shoulders. She looked less like a commander and more like someone bracing for impact.
Mr. Chen stood first. He calmly and methodically laid out the timeline, from the illegal implementation of the addendum to the escalating and targeted fines. He was professional, precise, and devastating.
Then, he projected the email chain onto the screen at the front of the room. A collective gasp went through the crowd as Evelyn’s own words appeared in large black letters: “It’s better to act decisively and deal with any minor complaints later… No one reads this stuff that closely anyway.”
The room was utterly silent. All eyes were on Evelyn.
The Unraveling of Evelyn Reed
“This is an outrageous invasion of privacy!” Evelyn sputtered, her voice a pitch higher than usual. “Those were private board communications!”
“They were attached to the official meeting minutes on the HOA’s public portal,” Mr. Chen countered smoothly. “They are public record. And they show a clear, documented intent to knowingly violate Article IX, Section 4 of the bylaws you swore to uphold.”
Evelyn looked to the other board members for support, but they wouldn’t meet her gaze. Jim, the man who had questioned her in the email, was staring at his hands, his face pale.
She turned her glare on me. “This is all because of you,” she seethed, her voice trembling with rage. “Because of one tacky, ridiculous statue. You have torn this community apart over nothing!”
“It was never about the gnome, Evelyn,” I said, standing up. My voice was steady. All the fear and anxiety I’d felt for weeks had been burned away, replaced by a cold, hard clarity. “It was about you deciding that the rules only apply when they suit you. It was about you bullying people and threatening their homes because you think your standards are the only ones that matter.”
I looked around the room, at the faces of my neighbors. “It turns out I’m not the only one who felt that way. We just needed a reason to finally say it out loud.”
A murmur of agreement rippled through the room. Evelyn looked out at the sea of faces—the people she had tried to control, the people she had dismissed and fined—and for the first time, I saw the mask of the Bylaw Queen shatter. Underneath was a woman who looked lost, cornered, and utterly alone.
The Vote
Mr. Gable stood up, his face red with indignation. “I make a motion to immediately nullify Addendum 114-B on the grounds that it was passed illegally.”
Another neighbor seconded it. Evelyn tried to object, but the board’s own bylaws required her to call a vote. It passed, 42 to 3. Gnorman was safe. The room broke into a smattering of applause.
But it wasn’t over.
Maria, the quiet neighbor who had been afraid to sign my petition, stood up. Her voice was quiet but clear. “I make a motion for a vote of no confidence in Evelyn Reed as board president.”
The room fell silent again, the tension ratcheting up even higher. Evelyn stared at Maria, her expression one of utter disbelief. It was one thing to be challenged by me, the troublemaker. It was another to be challenged by one of the quiet ones.
Mr. Henderson, sitting near the front, seconded the motion in a firm voice.
The vote was done by a show of hands. I raised mine. Mark’s went up beside me. One by one, other hands followed. Mr. Gable’s. Maria’s. The young couple’s. Dozens of hands, a silent, powerful rebellion.
The motion passed overwhelmingly. Evelyn Reed, who had ruled the neighborhood with an iron fist, had been deposed. She sat frozen for a moment, then gathered her purse with a sharp, jerky movement and walked out of the room without a backward glance.
A Different Kind of Garden
A week later, I was back in my garden. Gnorman was in his rightful place by the petunias, his stupid grin seeming a little more triumphant than usual. The HOA had sent a formal letter rescinding all fines and apologizing for the “procedural error.”
I was mulching the hydrangeas when I saw Evelyn walking down the street. She was dressed in gray sweatpants and an old fleece, her hair unkempt. She kept her eyes fixed on the pavement in front of her. As she passed my house, she didn’t look up. She just kept walking, a small, diminished figure, stripped of her authority and her purpose.
I felt a strange, hollow pang in my chest. It wasn’t pity, not exactly. But it wasn’t the triumphant joy I had expected either. I thought of what Mr. Henderson had told me, about her late husband and her desperate, misguided attempt to maintain his world of perfect order. I had won, but her loss felt deeply, profoundly sad.
Mark came out onto the porch, handing me a glass of iced tea. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, taking a sip. “Just thinking.”
He followed my gaze down the street, where Evelyn was turning the corner, disappearing from view. “It was the right thing to do, Sarah. You stood up for yourself. You stood up for all of us.”
I knew he was right. It had been about more than a gnome. It had been about the simple, fundamental right to have a small patch of the world that was your own, to fill it with your own joy, however tacky or whimsical it might be.
I looked at my chaotic, colorful, imperfect garden. It was my space. I had fought for it. And the peace I felt, kneeling there in the dirt, was a peace I had earned
About the Author
