The morning sun hits the new fence in my backyard, but it’s six feet further onto my grass than it was yesterday.

My neighbor, Brenda, is standing on her porch sipping tea, watching me stare at the fresh wood.

“I had a surveyor out,” she calls out, her voice dripping with fake honey. “Turns out your garden was actually on my lot.”

I’ve lived in this house for fifteen years, and my father built that garden with his own two hands.

I know exactly where the iron pin in the ground is, and I know Brenda is lying through her teeth.

She’s the head of our neighborhood HOA, and she’s used to bullying people into getting exactly what she wants.

“Brenda, move the fence by noon, or things are going to get very expensive for you,” I say calmly.

She laughs, a sharp, cackling sound that makes the hair on my arms stand up. “Try me, sweetie. I AM the board.”

She thinks she’s playing a game of chicken, but she doesn’t realize I’ve been holding the registration for the land behind her house too.

I don’t call the police, and I don’t call the HOA; I call a local demolition crew I’ve known for years.

I show them my original deed and the legal permits I pulled an hour ago for “emergency land clearing.”

When Brenda comes home from her hair appointment, her precious $50,000 “Zen Shed” is being hoisted onto a flatbed.

The fence she built is gone, and in its place is a massive trench being dug right through her prized rose bushes.

She’s screaming, clutching her chest, and threatening to sue every person standing on the grass.

“You’re trespassing!” she shrieks, but the foreman just points to the surveyor I hired who is standing next to me.

“Actually, Brenda, your shed was four feet over the line, and per the HOA rules YOU wrote, I’m removing the violation.”

I watch as they haul her expensive little sanctuary away to the city impound lot.

She’s ruined her own reputation by being so greedy she forgot to check her own boundaries.

I go back inside and make a sandwich while she cries on the dirt where her shed used to be.
***
Did she deserve to lose her expensive shed because she tried to steal a few feet of land?