Yesterday was sunny and in the high 50's, so I took the opportunity to repot the vegie seedlings. Most had come up very well, but there was one whole flat that nothing ever came up. This container had 3 different tomato seeds and the soil was the same as I used in the other flats, so I don't know what the problem was. There were a couple of types of peppers that were a bit slow on the uptake, but they eventually showed up.
The flat with no seedlings is on the right.
I put them up in 6" pots so they should be good until it is time to transplant. They are up in the greenhouse (which WS put up a couple of weeks ago) so I just have to remember to water them every so often.
While I was potting up seedlings, WS was working on the screen door. Thru the years, the animals have demolished the screen and we had it repaired this spring. We spent some time searching for a solution (at one point, I had glued on panels of thin, clear plexiglass, which worked but cut down on air flow and the glue only held for one summer). I found some stuff on-line and showed it to WS.
He believed he could make something similar, so off to the hardware store we went so I could pick out what I wanted (he did the scouting trip, I had to pick out the pattern). We used decorative aluminum panels that WS cut to size and screwed onto the screen frame:
From the outside - notice that it is nice and tall as Shadow had learned that he could reach over the 2.5' piece of plexiglass I had put up years ago. You can't really tell the pattern - it is nothing fancy but looks different than the picture shows.
From the inside, you can barely tell it is there - so we can see the cats when they want in. The holes in the panel allow for air flow. As an added bonus, Missy can see it so she won't bounce off it when she is in a hurry (as she had done with just the screen material in place.
This looks like it should be a good solution. The only issue will be if the cats decide to pick at the screen when they want out, but they usually don't do that - only for when they want in.
Bogie--Pattern? What pattern? It looks like a piece of copper screen placed on the outside of the black-coated screen, so I'm a bit confused (no wise cracks!)
Hope it works out for you. It surely looks great from inside! At any rate, I'm curious as to what the material of the new panel is.
Posted by: Cop Car | April 25, 2010 at 09:37 AM
The material is aluminum sheeting (hence, the "decorative aluminum" description in the post - had to razz you about it anyway :>)
The pattern is a pattern of small holes (too small for cats' claws to reach in) throughout the panel.
Posted by: bogie | April 25, 2010 at 02:46 PM
Wow! The perforations are small & regular. It looked like woven screen, to me. (Yes, I need more razzing now that your dad is out of town! Obviously, I didn't retain the title of the piece in memory - what memory?)
Posted by: Cop Car | April 26, 2010 at 12:39 PM