starting to count the winter losses

I'm beginning to count the winter's casualties, and fear there will be quite a few.  It was colder for longer last December than in the previous winter, and some things that made it through 2009-10, albeit looking a bit burnt by the cold, are now looking dead, like my Acacia pravissima.  I don't like to assume the worst too early, as plants can have amazing powers of regeneration, but I'm concerned that things like Callistemon that were cut to the ground the previous year and had begun to reshoot from the roots won't have the energy to repeat that trick a second time.  Even so I won't rush to dig them out, just in case.

I have no hope at all that the crisped up leafless remains of my rosemary 'Severn Sea' are still alive.  It only went in last year.  I chose that variety because the flowers are a very beautiful shade of blue, and it is supposed to flower over a very long season, and I wanted a low growing one.  Rosemary can be short lived as shrubs go, but the prostrate ones tend to last for longer than the upright growers because the branches root where they touch the ground, and the plant renews itself that way.

I try to be philosophical about losses in general, on the grounds that these things happen, it is interesting to see how plants behave and what succumbs or surprises you by surviving, and the gaps created do offer opportunities to try new things.  But it is galling to lose a lot two years in a row.  Partly it is the expense of replacing plants, and the extra work created by having to clear away the remains and replant.  Plus weeds love bare soil, and established plants act as weed suppressants.  Each lost plant, or failed bit of 2010 planting that has to be done again, represents another bit of ground that will have to be kept weed free this year, when I had hoped that it would be starting to look after itself.  I might need to take a slightly more hawkish view about what can be regarded as hardy, and how much doubtfully hardy stuff I can cope with.  I saw a wonderful rose at Wyken Hall a couple of years ago and have been wondering where I could fit one in.  Maybe in the space previously occupied by Acacia pravissima?