Shmuel: Our winter was mild for December & January, but then the bottom dropped out for February & some of March, during which there was snow cover for most of those 1.5 months. The plant originally started out with a thin cover of pine bark mulch, but that quickly decayed and/or blew away. No drifts of leaves to act as mulch. I'll just write it off as a fluke for now. It was just one winter. And don't tell the plant as it may yet expire. After all it was never meant to survive; it was meant as an offering to the plant gods. --Jerry Lehmann, Olathe, KS, USA, zone 5