I'm sure by now you know if they survived, up here we deal with bad cold spills more often, sometimes I put frost blankets over the plants. These I use often, also to keep birds out the ripening fruits. Here is a link that might be useful: Frost Blanket

Oh wow, just noticed you are making all of these yourself? They all would benefit from a few things waiting until the heat and serve time...a half hour before party time. (keeps cooking during the party even on a simmer) Cheese, cream/milk, coconut milk, herbs, etc. Basically anything that is added last in the recipe that says "add last and bring to temp and serve". Canned corn is kinda dead tasting and usually full of sugar. Frozen, added morning-of, would be better. Puree half of it for creamed corn. Side bowls of fresh herbs, limes, cilantro, grated cheese, croutons, toasted slices of baguettes, tortilla chips...even if it is already in the soup, folks like to customize their bowl, :) (tortilla added to the soup gives a nice flavor and breaks down in the broth and really good, but adding half later is nice for the texture) Almost all soups freeze just fine as leftovers cooked all the way as a recipe even with a pasta or rice...but do taste like a leftover. Holding off an ingredient or two will give it some freshness, like the chopped kale or fresh chopped tomatoes. When i thaw leftover soups, i always dig in the fridge and look for something fresh to add, like a fresh frozen salsa, pesto, shelled edamame... You are on the right tract by holding off what makes sense. Keeping the list and menu planned and organized for what goes into where and when can be tricky. (imagine what a restaurant chef goes through all day, every day! yikes) -don't mean to be anti-canned goods, but most of those recipes passed around are coming from the big manufacturers of processed foods, so the same flavors can be made with much fresher ingredients without the chemicals and fake flavors.

I trim mine back more than that but I only do mine every other year so have to make it good. This year I pruned them in early April and they're about eighteen inches tall now. To my way of thinking the goal is to open them up for air flow and so the sun can penetrate as well as controlling size- I'm not fond of "shearing" where all one does is shape the outside of the plant while leaving great wads of tangled branches within. I like to get in there at the base and try to direct future growth with my pruning cuts to make each year easier. But I will tell you that I have so many spirea that I often get frustrated and just hack them down- spirea are very forgiving. But I still do it in a 'pruning mode' not a 'shearing mode.' Every year your pruning skills will increase and bit by bit you can get them back into shape. We bought this place in '07, moved and divided all the spirea that fall, and in a couple of years they looked well established again.

In that configuration, many fridges would not open enough to remove drawers. However, it depends on the specific make and model of YOUR fridge. Look on the manufacturer's website for the specifications (usually a PDF). For example, for my previous Samsung side-by-side fridge, it was 16". For my current Bosch counter-depth French door fridge, it's 11".