After my “success” with the bougainvillea, I figured I’d better get to work on the jasmine. We’d already heard a comment from at least one neighbor that the vines were creeping under the fence into his yard, so I did some researching on pruning. From what I found, it looks like jasmine can handle being pruned back pretty harshly, it just may take a few years before it starts flowering again.

I started with the biggest one, which I had previously tried to cut away from the purple bougainvillea, with limited success (jasmine on the left, bougainvillea on the right):

That’s a 6-foot tall fence behind it, in case you needed some perspective. It also mounded out a good 3 feet. For lack of a better plan, I just started hacking away with no idea how far I’d get. I quickly discovered that only about the first half foot was leafy green vine, the next 2 feet in were dried and disintegrating plant matter from who knows how many years of growth. And after some more hacking, I found a trellis, which explained how this thing was so tall and deep:

I gave up at that point since my forearms were on fire. When Dave came home and saw the carnage, he could only say, “You killed it!” I think he was joking, since there was clearly still a big chunk of green stuff on the left-hand side…

I didn’t get a chance to work on it again for another two weeks, but I may have really killed it this time. I’m pretty happy though, I can actually see the ground on all sides and the rather decrepit fence is no longer being attacked:

I left a few short vines with leaves, maybe it’ll grow back? If it does I’m going to put up a new trellis for sure, and make sure it doesn’t get completely out of hand again.

Unfortunately I managed to snip through the irrigation line during the battle:

We were already planning a trip to the hardware store though, and they have an entire aisle devoted to accessories for irrigation systems, so this should be fixed pretty quickly.

One down, two to go. Who knows if my arms will hold up, though…