It got really cold last night, and when I checked the maximum-minimum Taylor on the side of the house, the mercury—I know... toxic ingredient but the thermometer dates back to the days when "quicksilver" was the norm—had bottomed out at 28 degrees F. The wood stove was kept chugging along, and as I looked at what the genuinely killing frost had wrought, it was definitely time to call a halt to the growing season, at least for the tender plants that I had left in place. The Impatiens crew was definitely among those that had given up the ghost overnight, and as the sun rose and illuminated their drooping stems, they showed no remaining sign of botanical life. The species without the wherewithal to handle the cold had experienced the growth of cell-wall-rupturing ice crystals and there was no return from that kind of terminal damage.