What a surprise!!! My first thought would be to leave them inside providing you have enough room for them. The nights in your area may still be cold enough to 'do them in'. Then you'll have the task of hardening them off before putting them out when it warms up. If you hate hardening off as much as I do, and had enough seed, I would re-do them all and put them out. Someone may have a better idea. Good luck!!

Thank you Paul. I had used a code the first time around, and the preview showed everything was fine, but somehow it all got mixed up and lots of quotation marks were added. So back to Google I went and searched again for how to add multiple pictures to gardenweb and I found a person who posted here who made it much easier to understand. So yea for that! Thanks for your help very much. Thank you Hanzrobo. I appreciate your empathy. And yes, I'm already looking for new additions to my collection. I actually found a pot of three tiny Pilosocerus azureus with 7 ribs yesterday! So aside from starting all over again, at least I have them. You may have picked up that I like blue plants, as well as any other amazing colors I can find. What is taking longer to get over is some of these plants survived a major relocation to a new environment with me, and the amount of time I'd had them prior to that as well. Tiny things that are now so much larger. I'll get by I'm sure, eventually. What needs to be cut I'll wind up cutting if I have to. What I can leave alone and allow new growth to happen naturally I'll just watch. And yeah, the Aloe is already getting along fine. Lots of other plants that aren't included in this post were affected. I lost a kalanchoe. Literally. I can't find any of the pieces or anything! Then a tiny bit turned up in a pot of cat nip seedlings. That's nice because it's one of the old friends of mine. Two other aloes were so pot-bound that you couldn't see the pot. One is almost untouched, one is almost just a pot now! And on and on. A bright side is I'll have lots of tiny plants of the ones I can grow from pieces. A mystery cactus (possibly Mammillaria species?) I have that grows rather quickly has gone from one potted plant to three potted plants now with all the pieces I picked up and stuffed in some dirt. It looks very much like a Mammillaria elongatus, only the central spines are hook shaped. I kind of went crazy when it bloomed last year. After that it grew so much more, and it just comes apart so easily, obviously a clever way of propagating itself. I'm attempting to add a picture of it below. This page needs some niceness to look at I think. Thanks very much for reading and adding your thoughts. I agree with you and have already started a moderate fertilizing process. Though I did recently read somewhere that a lower nitrogen fertilizer is better for cacti and succulents because too much nitrogen can cause them to retain too much water and get too soft. Maybe someone here has some thoughts on that as well. The garden is watered and sitting in their wet/dry outdoor sauna, and I'm huddled up to the air conditioner and thinking it's nap time now. I'll dream of happy plants with lot of amazing flowers!

Brock, if anybody is guilty of writing too much, it is I, appreciate your input on the matter. I believe you are correct, it's Chinese or Japanese roof iris aka crested iris (did some googline). I did see zone 5b somewhere which is the colder limit for them, and I definitely think there is a difference b/t 5a and 5b, but I might be able to squeak some things through anyway. Now that is distressing that they may not survive the winter. I just set them out this afternoon, new area where there is no protection, and will have to mulch (or something) for the winter and expect to lose them. There are too many similar in this class to know exactly what to expect. If they make it through the summer, I could pot a few up and bring them inside, but that defeats my purpose as I have enough already to winter inside. They look so nice with that pretty foliage. Yes, I could move some, but I've got scads more plants waiting to be set out. Yes, I agree that some, not all, mail-order retailers exaggerate the zone business because they would lose sales. A topic for another time, tired after setting out 24 plants, used my bulb planter which made things go a little faster. I think I had my tiller set to till and not cultivate, oh well, it had gotten so bad so fast, it needed the extra power, but I'm worried if I could have compromised the roots forming on the Austins I set in there ealier. They should recover.

A similar thing we have right now, which is giving me NO END of joy, is branches (thing - is; branches - are -- whichever one you want) of an Italian plum tree that I pruned off because they got over our blueberries (neighbor's tree). The branches were in bud when I brought them in an d put them in water, but now they've opened and have those gorgeous, sweet-smelling plum blossoms against bear branches, coming out at gorgeous skew curves from a tall narrow vase (filled with water and indoor-plant fertilizer). I'm in living-bouquet heaven! It changes every day as more and more flowers and hints of leaves come out. It's a bit sad because they won't ever bear fruit, but it's better than having just thrown them on the compost heap. It's going to be a February tradition from now on : )