Winter Event...Arizona Style

We have one side of our fence that is still the original 30 year old crappy wood fence. It's barely hanging on. The other two sides of our yard now have a nice block wall that will never go anywhere, but this last side requires a tall retaining wall to be up before we can finish the fence. So, anytime the wind blows we usually lose a section. This is one of the many repairs Stephen has made on our side. Our neighbor next door has made just as many on his side. You may be thinking that's the ugliest repair EVER. You're right, and Stephen agrees with you, but we're running out of good anchoring ground so that's the best we could do. Last night the wind started blowing....LIKE HOLBROOK! I haven't been in wind like last night since I left Radiator Springs, uh, I mean Holbrook.
Right before we went to bed, I looked at Stephen and told him, "It will be nothing short of a miracle if that fence stays up."
IT STAYED UP!
I've gotta give that boy credit. He can usually fix or figure out a way to fix just about anything. Although, I think those engineering classes have probably contributed to that. ;-D

The back 3 panels of fence didn't fare so well; they all came down. This is the neighbor's yard. I heard our neighbor out there working on it and told him when Stephen would be getting home so they can work on it together. I think between the two of them they'll be able to come up with a more durable fix because we know that darn retaining wall is a LONG way off. Our darling little puppies will be spending the day with Nanny so his 3 black labs/rottweilers won't eat them.

I checked on the other side of the house and only had one word to say about this....I won't share it with you, but I DID share it with Stephen. He loves it when I do that. We were going to sell this set at a yard sale in a couple weeks. We set it up on the pavers you can see on the left of the picture, wrapped a huge tarp around it with a bungee cord to hold it on in the wind and figured it'd be fine. This morning I found it flopped over laying in the mud puddle with no dang tarp covering at all. GRRRR! We'll be making a dump run if anyone has anything else that needs to go.

I wouldn't be even a little annoyed about all the ruined and broken stuff if the storm had damaged something useful in the process. We need a roof! Did the storm rip off the shingles? NO Did it blow the swamp cooler to the ground so we could replace the 30 year old monster? NO Did it rip a whole section of roof off? NO
RUDE, RUDE, RUDE STORM!

I am VERY grateful we have already cut down all our big eucalyptus trees; last night's storm would've brought them down. Stephen says in Australia, or somewhere like that, those trees are called widow makers. I believe it, they are so brittle and just can't handle storms like that.

However, I loved the rain, and my front yard plants loved it too!