what experience taught you that your climate was different?

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I am composing some thoughts for writing/speaking and would like to hear from some of you here. There was a moment in time when I realized that the climate in which I gardened was not the same as the climate that many garden writers talked about. As a young man, I was given a few bulbs of Arum palaestinum by a neighbor in my town (Santa Clara, CA). As I grew it for a few years, it was obvious that it was determined to go completely dormant each summer, regrowing afresh in the fall and over the winter, then flowering in spring as the leaves were dying down. I still have some of these bulbs over 40 years later! This was my first experience growing a decidedly mediterranean climate plant (though that term was not in common usage at the time).

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hortulus_aptus/7091258775

Do any of you have similar stories?