I recovered my patio in San Diego with clear corrugated plastic stuff, sold in 10 and 12 foot sheets at Lowe's/Home Depot. In 4 years or more, it never turned hazy, it did get dirty occasionally, but easily cleaned off with a hose running over it. If you can slope it like mentioned before, that will help clean it easier and stuff will run off with the rain. My patio was the home for night blooming jasmine, that actually wove itself around the frame of the covering, so the plastic sheets were not affected. (If you can control it that way) I would just suggest a vine with thin stems/runners, something large like a wisteria or the like, could push your clear plastic covering out of place.

We used clear Lexan. I wanted flat plexiglass, but it's not strong enough and the wind splintered the test panel, so we had to go with the corrugated stuff. If your pergola has a lot of slats, the corrugation does not show much. Pros: It's nice to have a dry patio. The smokers go out there all year round and don't get wet. It lets in lots of natural light so that the house is not gloomy. Plants LOVE it- I call it my magical spot. Cons: It's loud in the rain if it's not well supported (mine's not). It's corrugated. It's hot in the summer because unless there's a breeze, it traps heat (we had to plant trees). It gets dirty if you don't have much of a roof slope and you have to hose it off. It sags if you don't have support more than every two feet (if you use it lengthwise). You have to make sure you build the support square, or your corrugations will go cattiwampus. Some build a solid roof for a few feet to keep water off the house and away from the sliding doors then leave the rest open with just slats. If my roof was not so low to begin with, I would have done that. Renee

Okay, maybe I am lucky. Or maybe work is just interfering with my gardening. Hmmmmmm. Maybe I should be complaining about that. It would be nice to take a sick day and stay home to plant, but I live a few blocks from work. They probably would frown. I must admit that my plants are looking wonderful. Some are a bit on the yellow side. I don't know if it's lack of sun or if the rain that has washed away all of the nutrients. I still am luckier than the farmers who can't get their crops in. We have had hail only once, but it was soft enough so there was no damage. Alot of my plants were planted in the mud. I'm going to hate mulching because in between all of the rows in the veggie garden are paths that are quite packed. The weeds like the rain as well. Oh well. Life is such. Shelley

Jali, when I emptied my rain gauge on Wednesday it had 1.4” in it. When I emptied it yesterday morning it had another 2.4” in it! Flood of '65, indeed! I emailed Barb last nite to let her know I had arrived safely—tense, but safe—and I mentioned the Flood of '65 to her! She's not old enough to remember it, but I am! It rained, like this time, for a week or whatever and everything was saturated—and then, like you said, it DUMPED and that was all they wrote! All the bridges in/out of Denver on the west side of town but ONE washed out, including one that was just a couple years old and had been built for a “500-year flood!” I have pics of a span of that bridge laying in the middle of the Platte! Huge sections of I-25 and the train tracks between Denver and the Springs washed out! I still have the newspapers from right after it with all the pics! But I hadn't stopped to think that this was the 50th anniversary of it!!! Cherry Creek Dam was still new back then, and there was near panic on the news that it was going to break—they were releasing water as fast as they could. I lived in an apartment about a half a block from Speer and we were listening to the radio so we'd know when to RUN—and then the power went out! I'm still here—so, no, it didn't break! And 25th anniversary of the Limon tornado! Wow! Some years to remember! Guess you remember that one well! What I remember was I was watching TV weather and all of a sudden the radar went down! Switched channels, and no radar! Switched again—nobody had radar anymore! That's when we knew it was “serious!” If the Limon radar was wiped out—what else in Limon was wiped out! Wasn't long and the channels were picking radar up from the airport, and that's when most of them switched to doppler! Memories! I've been watching Denver radar today, and the forecast, and at least it looks like this is about the end of it for right now, so, hopefully, no repeat of '65! Thinking of you all down in the lowlands--make that WETlands--right now, Skybird