Based on my experience, if the temperatures get really cold, they need good snow cover to survive, so if you had a particularly cold spell without snow, they may not have survived. The particular cultivar you have matters as well. Lucifer is the hardiest. I haven't been able to overwinter any others, though I have tried. I am not sure, but I think the voles in my garden eat some of them as well, though they aren't a favorite food or there would be none left.

Oh yay! I had no idea they did that! I thought they just stayed on the food source the whole time. My sister did see them the day before they went missing and she said they were gigantic compared to when we first found them so perhaps it was time to move on to the next stage. Docmom, the parsley was and is huge and only had one caterpillar on it (that I could see) which is why I found it strange that he was gone as well...as surely HE had enough to eat. All plants outdoors - I should have said "there are no birds in my back yard, I assume because of the *feline* cat enclosure." :) My plant beds are as wide open as can be but I never ever see birds. I'm actually *trying* to attract them with baths, houses and seed - I have a huge grasshopper problem. I always chalked it up to too many kitties nearby - albeit restrained and unable to pounce.

Good contest! "It is a significant garden for plant people." This at least narrows it down to a couple hundred at most. The architecture did throw me, and I consider myself an amateur architectural historian. (I've won a similar contest by being able to recognize the architecture in Windhoek, NB...of course I've never been there!) It does not look like the stereotype of California building styles. When I saw the first post, I thought it was somewhere in eastern Canada!

Earthworms need organic matter, that is what they live on. How much is in the soil?