We’ve been getting some strong winds, which unfortunately have ravaged the really old and dilapidated sections of our fence:

(I sure hope those pieces weren't important...)

Due to our interesting location in the neighborhood, we actually share a fence line with 5(!) different neighbors. Two of the 5 sections of fence seem to have been replaced fairly recently, and the longer of the two was even replaced with a taller fence, which nicely hides our neighbor’s storage sheds from view. This section of fence in the picture was already pretty bad when we moved in, so it was really just been a matter of how long we could get away with not replacing it. Our neighbor pretty much just uses that part of his yard to store old boats and boat parts, so he hasn’t been in much of a rush.We’re not really in a rush either, even with it looking this bad.

But then another section of fence lost 4 slats all in a row. And this is the neighbors with a ridiculous vegetable garden and rabbit pens in their yard. The slats were just being held in place with grooves and tension, so we stuffed them back into place and screwed in some extra support:

(Surely this will hold for a long time...)

With that done, I turned to finally hacking back the bougainvilleas. I had trimmed both of them down pretty far over the summer, but the bigger one was back to looking like this:

(Dave told me to try to look "fierce".)

I’m pretty sure that one branch was 10 feet tall!!! But I perservered, and after much battle, I had the whole plant down to this:

(Ha! Take that!)

And here’s the carnage:

(Did I mention the branches were covered in super-long thorns?)

Possibly now the fence will lose more pieces if we get some more high winds, but I’m happy to finally have that thing under control. For now…