I'm Ania from Southern CA. I live with my boyfriend and 2 of our own little terrier dogs (also known as terrors) and a third foster terrier. We just purchased a house a year ago so this is my second year gardening. Until we bought the house, I was one of those people that would kill every plant that was in my care. I'm trying to change that and I have several houseplants that have lived a year for me now. For me, that's good. I did some landscaping on the property last year and well, let's just say I did it again this year with plants that would actually work for the area. They are working so far. I grew a few things in pots last year with limited success. I started really late a got a just a few tomatos from 3 plants that got attacked by hornworms, some Jalapeno's and Cubanelles and some Okra. My herbs did well and I had a lot of basil and still have pineapple sage and mint from last year. I tried, unsuccessfully to grow eggplant as well. This year, I decided to actually learn how to garden and here I am. This year I'm growing 8 varieties of tomatoes, several varieties of peppers, a couple of eggplants, tomatillos, several squash and zucchini, green onions, lima beans, and a few other things all in containers. I am also just now sprouting chard and amaranth. I also have a lot of herbs growing. I made some big mistakes to start with and got a late start on some things but all is going fairly well. I'm really glad to have found this place so I can learn and maybe I can know what I'm doing with this gardening stuff one day. Ania

I'm already replied to this in the pets forum- This is better off placed here anyway. Perhaps the only other way at helping them/ other then making intact pets illegal would be to raise standards of pet food to that of human food( i'll get to the how in a little bit)- by doing this your making people who would do this kind of stuff just see it as not worth it in the first place meaning less dogs/cats would end up in this type of situation.. Sadly the only way to realistically raise the standards of all pet food would be to make pets okay for US to eat as they do in other cultures/Asia for example.- Its sounds barbaric- I know. BUT it would virtually force the pet food companies to raise their standard because there could be a 10 to 5% chance the animal eating it would be eaten by a human. FDA wouldn't allow by products or nasty food to be used anymore. Humans would have an overflow of unwanted pets at first but then as time passed the people who would turn out pets would just see them as... oh a rich car or something beyond their means of support and none or greatly less animal populations would be starving and roaming. AND animal control would find a better way of dealing with unwanted roaming pets then they do now/ use them as meat- the drugs that would be used if pts would not because the animal would be killed and eaten by us, we wouldn't be poisoning wildlife with dog and cat corpses or other pets when the dead pts animals are used in pet food- When Pet food is heated you ruin the DNA Thats why they haven't been told on as widely as they should. Plus there are starving humans that need food also. I wouldn't eat dog or cat but it sure beats having your pet eat another pet, and its safer on wildlife that may find a dog or cat carcass tinted with PTS chemicals and feed and then die. This has happened to Bears,eagles( our National bird!) Coyotes,wolves, all the meat eaters that feed from a carcass-however do I understand most of the time it would be Horses or cows, but at lest pets wouldn't end up as feeding on pets in food under meat meal or meat and bone meal- our pets would eat better and there would be less feral/wild animals.

Zennifer I understand what you're trying to do, totally understand the location and blood/sweat/tears you've got in the current home. But prepare to be shocked. My guess is financially you'd still be better off moving. I wouldn't attempt an addition onto your house without an architect's help bc I agree it could easily look funky and wrong. The examples above proved it for me. How much would it suck to pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into it, only to have it look bad in the end? Good luck. I've been there. Loved my old little home but it didn't make financial sense to add on. We moved. Sometimes I still miss that old house but it was the right decision.

I think drapery tape or most any other fabric would stretch and sag in the middle.   If I was tackling this, I might put a casing on the fabric and slip in a dowel. Then I would screw in probably 4 cup hooks under the bottom rail, each end and between the supports. Then cut a slot like a buttonhole matching up with the hooks and support the dowel on the hooks. I don't think you would need to finish the edges of the cuts because they would  be hidden and shouldn't get any tension. If you try this, be sure to drill holes for the hooks because the hooks are usually not very strong and that wood is going to be hard.  Lace isn't my style so I might try a plain color boring fabric...at my house it would be whatever I found in my stash until I decided whether the approach was a winner.