Sickly Palms

I NEED HELP- The picture on the right is my trachycarpus when first planted back in April 2000, the picture to the left is what i found on the weekend of Nov. 11, 2000.  As you can see it is very yellowed and all of the tips have curled inward, so i cut them off.  What can i do to help this palm????

The spear isn't yellow but is just a tad loser than normal.  When i first saw these palms this past weekend (11/11/00) there was sort of a ditch dug around the base of the trunk wich made the whole palm rather movable wich isn't a good sign.  When i had left it a few weeks before it was very firm in the ground.  It had only been 2-3 weeks time since the palm got like this.  If i would of waited another week before seeing it, it might have been dead.  The best thing i thought to do was to put some more dirt around the base  and loaded a bunch of mulch around it so it would stay still (not moveable)  then i cut all the dead fronds off and burlaped the trunk.  Is there anything else i can do to save this palm, or is it gonna die??

This picture is my sabal etonia that was planted in April 2000, i grew a lot over the summer putting out about 3-4 new fronds.  The picture below is the same etonia on Nov 11, 00.  The ditch dug around  this one was way deeper than the trachy.  I actually saw the base of the palm (area just about the root, it was i very light green, almost white color)  I quickly covered it back up with dirt and threw a lot of mulch and woodchips around it.  I cut all the real bad looking fronds (just kept a couple for the pic)  This palm does have another small spear comming up (circled in purple) wich doesn't seem to be damaged but i guess its hard to tell when that small.  Can these plants recover before any real hard freezes ( i got about a month until that happens)  I don't know what else to do to save these palms, any help would be appreciated.