"The trees don't care what you meant to deliver," he said that day. "They only get what reaches them."
I had not thought about that sentence in years. Now it followed me every time I opened the water ledger.
The orchard was not the only place where the diversion began producing consequences. On the Thursday after Linda and I met, Canyon Lake Estates held an emergency board session. Linda later showed me the approved minutes through counsel and described portions of the discussion that had not been confidential. Denise arrived with a presentation about declining property values and an invoice for emergency lake management. Two directors asked to see a completed water transfer agreement. She offered the same one-page authorization, which by then had already been challenged by the irrigation district.
Nora Bell was not on the board, but she attended the open portion of the meeting with six other residents. She told me later that the atmosphere was unlike any meeting she had attended there. People who normally argued about landscaping colors were suddenly discussing property boundaries, bank records, contractor approvals, and whether the association had been using water it did not own.
"Denise said you were making a personal attack on the neighborhood," Nora told me when she stopped at the farm store afterward.
"And what did you say?"
"I asked whether she had a district approval number. She said the legal details were still under review. Then I asked why the pipe was installed before the review."
"How did she answer?"
Nora gave me a tired smile. "She said I wasn't an irrigation engineer."
"Neither am I. I know where my pipe is, though."
Linda's account of that meeting was more troubling. When she asked how the association had supposedly paid twelve thousand dollars to Pierce Orchard without a corresponding transaction, Denise claimed the expense had been arranged outside the ordinary accounts and would be reconciled later. Linda asked whether she meant a personal payment, an escrow account, or a deferred payment agreement. Denise could identify none.
The association's attorney, who had been listening quietly, advised the board to stop discussing the matter in open session until the records were preserved and reviewed. That advice did not make everyone happy. Some residents thought silence proved the board was hiding something. Others thought the attorney was protecting the association from irresponsible public accusations. I understood both reactions. But I also knew that a preserved record was worth more than a meeting where everybody shouted over the person who held the folder.
Denise continued telling residents that the problem was temporary. She suggested I was exploiting legal technicalities to demand a higher price for water that had already been promised. One resident left an angry voicemail at our farm store, saying my trees should not matter more than the neighborhood's investments. Another told Sam at the feed supplier that farmers always found a way to turn a drought into an insurance claim.