Also they are stabby and sharp and they hurt

So I have a love/hate relationship with bougainvillea. I may or may not have written about it before, but here I am again, because those particular plants flourish in the desert when watered regularly, so they are pretty much everywhere here. Full disclosure: I have two small bougainvillea in pots in my backyard, but they're little so they are puppies and not big ol' dogs.

    My neighbor behind our backyard and on the other side of my fence has a big ol' dog bougainvillea. It's so large that her gardeners can't get to the back of it for trimming. So they trim back as much as they can reach, but then just kind of shrug their shoulders and leave it be. Herein is my issue. That part that they can't reach? It grows over my fence and into my backyard, and drops all its fucking flowers in my garden bed. And it's just generally being very annoying.

    Last night and tonight, Brian and I have been trimming back at our own backyard tree so I can have easier access to the bougainvillea. I've got most of it trimmed back, but there's a couple really big and thick branches that are too tall for me to get to right now. I'll try again tomorrow, and I made some real progress today, so perhaps I can actually finish it and make my yard look normal again.

    What else is cool is that my gardenia is growing and budding and blooming like crazy. And Sydney had not smelled a gardenia in the yard in a long time so she'd forgotten how awesome they smell, and now she loves our flower baby as much as I do. Gardenias are the bomb. Bougainvilleas are not.