Because of the prolonged, severe arctic blast, it has become too cold in our Solar Room for my tropical plants. So we've done our best to bring a few hundred of them inside the main parts of our home. There is now no room to walk in our living or dining rooms, and the foyer is pretty packed, too.

Because we've run out of floor space, I can't temporarily harbor any more house plants in our main living areas. So the really large trees (that are too big to move) and about 100 tropicals, all my herbs, and around 50 cacti/succulents are still out in the Solar Room. If the outdoors temperatures really do drop to minus -16 (like predicted), there is a high chance that inside the Solar Room may drop to freezing & a lot of plants will then be lost. We have 3 space heaters running, and that may help save some of them. But the room is so large (10x80 feet) that the heaters won't have a major impact in this room that is a whole lot of glass.

This extreme cold snap is supposed to last for another 9 days.

After that, I'll have to see how many of the plants still in the Solar Room have survived. Then, we'll clean up the Solar Room, and probably spend the next 4 days or so taking the plants (now inside the main part of our house) back out to the Solar Room. It took us 4 days to bring them in from their normal Solar Room Winter home.

The Solar Room is part of our home, but it is unheated. During normal Winter weather, things don't get cold enough to harm even tropical plants. In fact, on a sunny day, the temperature can go above 80 degrees. However, with a long stretch of no sun and zero to sub zero temperatures, that all changes.

Before this extended arctic blast, I had flowers in full bloom all over the Solar Room. It was a place of cheer. In general, my Solar Room plants had been experiencing a very good Winter this year. But then - in the spirit of the way things have been going all over the world in 2020/2021 - the luck ran out.