I graduated from high school in 1995. The community I grew up in was incredibly diverse. It was a decent sized city (100k+) and we had about 3,000 students the year I graduated.

That summer, we went to rural Idaho for a family reunion. It was probably the first time in my life that I visited a place that was exclusively white. I’m a white dude myself, but like I said, grew up in a diverse community.

The lack of diversity was a giant culture shock to me. I was in a small community with a population that was about half the size of the school I had just graduated from.

I’m in Southern CA (Zone 10a), too. Still don’t have any ripe tomatoes. Everything is super slow this year.