Baby, it's cold outside, and so is you garden.

In fact our weather of late has been quite cold hovering just above zero F, so 30 degrees below freezing. With a bit of wind, the apparent temperature is quite a bit lower. And you gardens and trees are being subjected to those temperatures too.  While a few plants in our gardens get a blanket of straw or shredded leaves, nothing gets a real royal treatment. Maybe you don't care enough to do much of anything, a fair weather gardener.  A regular commenter has supplied us with a link showing how gardeners in Korea  protect their plants from cold weather. So if you have a lot of nice, rice straw and a lot of time you can do this too. This is an amazing amount of work to cover trees, and beds, and pots with straw blankets.  How do they make such mats? Do they have a big straw sewing machine? TPP has also seen gardeners in Japan erect a tent of ropes around trees to support the horizontal branches of conifers from breaking under the weight of snow. Many thanks to WC for calling this to our attention.