Then the association will proceed with fines. $200 a day every day until the wall was gone. I nodded slowly. All right, I said. I’ll look into it. She smiled like she just solved a problem. Wonderful. I’m glad we understand each other. I walked back up the hill that evening thinking about something my old boss used to say when we were building retaining systems.
He’d say, “Luke, dirt doesn’t care about opinions. Dirt only listens to gravity.” The next morning, I went digging through my garage filing cabinets. One thing about working construction most of your life, you keep paperwork. Sure enough, buried in an old binder was the original property survey from when we bought the house in 2002.
I spread it across the workbench and traced the lot lines with my finger. The retaining wall sat entirely on my side. Not an inch crossed into anyone else’s property. Next, I found the building permit from the county. Stamped, approved, signed off by a structural engineer. So, technically speaking, the wall was legal, permitted, and fully on my land.
But I already knew something Vanessa probably didn’t. Itch. Disputes don’t always follow logic. They follow paperwork. So, I decided to get more. I called a soil engineer I’d worked with before, a guy named David Morales, who specialized in slope stability. He came out a few days later with a clipboard, a transit level, and that look engineers get when they see a problem forming in slow motion.
We walked the property together. He measured the grade, poked around in the soil, and spent a good 20 minutes examining the retaining wall itself. Finally, he stood up, brushed dirt off his hands, and looked down the hill toward Vanessa’s yard. “Who built this?” he asked. I did, he nodded once. Good work. That felt nice to hear.
