Hmmm--just weighing in on the whole winter thing--it might be relative
I used to live west of Denver in suburbia, (and in Tabernash-up in the mountains- and Fort Collins, both in CO, and also in the middle of nowhere in wicked windy, cold MN) now I'm in northern mountainous UT, which isn't all that different from CO, and, semps survive brutal winters...
I mean, I can't even begin to count the times it's been below zero, the wind's whipping, and the naked semps have survived just fine--
Although the semps do have a harder time without snow cover and look pretty rough come spring time, I have never lost any from not watering them in the winter when we don't have snow cover. I guess it's never really even occurred to me to do it, because I figured they were dormant. I do confess to shoveling snow on some of the 'container' semps when we have it, but that's been the extent of my winter 'watering', even with the extremes we get in freeze/thaws.
Early spring, once it starts to warm up more consistently, I do tend to water some of the drier containers if we aren't getting the big, sloppy wet snow, but not the ones in the ground, or in the rocks, and I've never had any trouble with that method.
Summer, though--when it's brutal high 90s and triple digit hot--that's when I have trouble and have killed a few with water, and without
Maybe in areas where it doesn't get cold enough to force the semps to hunker down, it's more critical to ensure that they don't dry out in the winter?
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