Mobile bus plant store slowly recovering after losing plants in winter storm

TOPSAIL ISLAND, NC (WWAY)– “Instant tears, because it’s our business, these plants are our business,” said Shannon Weems, as she saw dead tropical house plants, flowers, and much more after a night of heavy snowfall.

“It was heartbreaking, for some of these plant, I have spent months taking care of them,” said Weems. “It’s almost like they are my children.”

Those members of her family belong to a mobile bus plant store called “Soulstice Botanicals”. Weems is the owner of the bus that travels all around the Cape Fear region selling plants, but that came to a halt when they saw their bus covered in snow on the outside, and freezing temperatures on the inside which killed more than 100 of their plants.

The cause of death, a heater that stopped working.

“The combination of a bomb cyclone, the snowstorm, with 50 mile per hour winds, and wind chills in the single digit, it was more than what our little heater could handle,” said Weems. “The next morning my gauge inside the bus read 30 degrees.”

Weems says anything lower than 30 degrees will kill tropical plants, and because of the cold weather, she lost roughly 3,000 dollars’ worth of plants. The few plants that were able to withstand the cold are close to dying.

With some of the plants that she still has, she is hoping to bounce back. Weems created a go fund me page to recover some of her inventory, which her community instantly helped with.

“We were so overwhelmed with the GoFundMe,” said Weems. “We tossed it back and forth, we felt weird begging for it, but at the same time, we knew we couldn’t recover from this. It’s just so devastating.”

With light coming to the end of the tunnel, Weems is ready to fill up the bus with a beautiful garden

” We are rebuilding. We are going for it. We are going to have a bus full of plants soon,” said Weems.