She shrugged.
"Plants don't care."
She was right.
The civil case was more complicated than the criminal one.
My homeowner's insurer covered some landscaping damage but excluded intentional acts by third parties. The HOA insurer argued Patricia had acted outside authorized duties. Sloan Site & Grading's insurer questioned whether the underground work fell within covered operations because several installations had no permits.
Everyone had a reason to point at someone else.
Eventually the parties entered mediation.
My damages were not the largest in the neighborhood.
One family faced foundation monitoring costs.
Another had a cracked retaining wall.
But the video of Patricia dumping garbage on me made my claim impossible to minimize.
There was no ambiguity about intent in that moment.
Her attorney tried to separate the garbage incident from the infrastructure case.
My attorney did the opposite.
He laid out the timeline.
Friday: county radar schedule confirmed.
Saturday 6:42 a.m.: Patricia stages contractor bags.
Saturday 7:16 a.m.: Patricia dumps garbage over me.
Saturday 7:18 a.m.: Patricia records the yard and describes it as unsafe.
Saturday 9:03 a.m.: she emails Greg Mullen photographs.
Saturday 11:30 a.m.: Greg recommends temporary unsafe classification.
Saturday 11:41 a.m.: Patricia presents emergency access agreement naming her brother's company.
Saturday 3:41 p.m.: I go to the county.
Sunday: radar discovers the open chamber and unauthorized pipes.
Monday: the originally scheduled county scan would have begun.
The garbage was not separate.
It was step one.
The mediation ended with a settlement fund supported by multiple insurers and defendants. I cannot discuss every term, but it covered restoration, legal expenses, medical evaluation, lost use, damaged property, and part of the reduction in home value during the investigation.
More important to me, the agreement required a permanent recorded disclosure of the corrected drainage system.
No future owner should have to discover MR-12 by accident.
The county removed the unauthorized connections.
Each affected property received a lawful drainage solution designed by independent engineers.
Patricia's pool overflow was rerouted into a permitted underground detention system on her own lot.
The old MR-12 chamber could not safely remain as it was.
Engineers opened it, removed the pumps and pipes, filled the void with controlled low-strength material, and capped the monitoring point.
The rusted metal cover that started everything was removed.
The county offered it to me before disposal.
I said no.
I had spent enough time thinking about MR-12.
Lily disagreed.
"You should keep it."
"Why?"
"Because it's the thing she didn't want you to find."
"That is exactly why I don't want it."
She considered this.
"Fair."
The garden reopened in early spring.
The county restored the grade and replaced the damaged lawn. They rebuilt one raised bed and compensated me for the others.
But I rebuilt the tomato bed myself.
Not because the contractor would have done it wrong.
Because I needed one part of the yard to become mine again through ordinary work.
Soil.
Boards.
Compost.
Seeds.
No inspectors.
No evidence bags.
No violation notices.
Just dirt under my fingernails.
On the first warm Saturday, Lily planted strawberries along the edge.
I planted tomatoes where Patricia had dumped the garbage.
That was not symbolic when I did it.
At least I told myself it wasn't.
Patricia and Keith were charged the following summer after the county completed its forensic review of the old reports and financial records.
The charges included fraud-related offenses, falsification of infrastructure records, conspiracy, criminal damage, trespass, and several counts connected to unpermitted drainage work. Patricia also faced the separate assault-related case from the garbage incident.
Their attorneys argued the underground system had evolved informally over many years and that the Sloans believed they were solving drainage problems the county had failed to address.
There was some truth buried inside that argument.
Maple Ridge's old infrastructure records were messy.
The 1988 temporary plans were still circulating in HOA files long after the 1991 revisions replaced them.
Some old monitoring points had been poorly documented.
Residents had complained about drainage for years.
Government recordkeeping had not been perfect.
But none of that explained false completion reports.
None of it explained unpermitted pipes.
None of it explained hidden payments.
And none of it explained why Patricia needed garbage in my garden before the county radar arrived.
The prosecution did not need to portray her as a cartoon villain.
They simply showed sequence and choice.
She knew MR-12 existed.
She knew her brother's 2012 report said it did not.
She knew later drainage jobs connected water to it.
She knew the county planned to scan the corridor.
She knew I had uncovered the marker.
She created an unsafe-property record.
She selected her brother's company as emergency contractor.
She pressured me to sign access before the scan.
And when I refused, she warned me that I "did not understand what would happen if the county became involved."
The county became involved.
That was the end of the scheme.
I testified for less than an hour.
The prosecutor asked me to describe the Saturday morning.
I told the jury about tying the tomato plant.
The shadow.
The garbage cart.
The smell.
The phone in Patricia's hand.
The words she used while recording.
Unsafe property.
Aggressive homeowner.
Sanitation concern.
Then the prosecutor played the video.
I had seen it dozens of times by then.
Watching it in court still made my stomach turn.
The jury watched Patricia enter my yard before sunrise and place the bags.
They watched her leave.
They watched her return later with the cart.
They watched her look down at me before tipping it.
There was no accident.
Then they watched what happened immediately afterward.
Instead of helping.
Instead of apologizing.
She raised her phone and began documenting the mess.
The prosecutor paused the video there.
"Mr. Brooks, at that moment, did you understand why she was recording?"
"No."
"When did you understand?"
"When I saw the access agreement."
"What did you understand?"
I looked toward Patricia.
She kept her eyes on the table.
"She needed a reason to remove me from my own backyard."
The prosecutor nodded.
"Why?"
"Because if the yard was officially unsafe, I couldn't be there. If I signed the form, her brother could dig there. If they changed MR-12 before the county scan, they could blame whatever remained on me."
"On your gardening?"
"Yes."
"Did you cause the underground drainage problem?"
"No."
"Did you install any pipe into MR-12?"
"No."
"Did you know it existed before you uncovered the cap?"
"No."
The defense attorney asked whether I disliked Patricia before the garbage incident.
"I disliked how she treated people."
"So you had a bias against her."
"I had emails from her."
A few jurors smiled.
He asked whether I had ever violated HOA landscaping rules.
I had.
Once, I left mulch bags visible from the street for three days.
Once, the sunflower issue.
He asked whether the yard was in fact unsafe.
"Eventually the county restricted part of it, yes."
"So Mrs. Sloan was correct."
"No."
"The ground was unstable."
"Because water from her property and other Sloan projects was being routed into a buried chamber."
"But you agree it was unsafe."
"She was not predicting the danger. She was hiding the cause."
That ended the useful part of his cross-examination.
Greg Mullen testified under immunity from civil claims arising from his cooperation. His testimony hurt Patricia more than mine.
He admitted she sent him the checklist.
He admitted she told him to arrive after eleven because she would have "documentation ready."
He admitted she had already drafted the emergency access agreement before he inspected the soil.
The judge asked him to repeat that.