This is an offshoot of the Spokane question.

Those of us in the Intermountain West have learned to spread ourselves over a bunch of forums. We're not Rocky Mountain, that's the Denver folk; we're certainly not Southwestern, but we have a lot to learn from them on Xericscaping; we are within driving distance of Seattle, and not afraid to try Pacific-slope things. A couple weeks ago we enjoyed visiting the folk from the micronurseries at the Fonderosa in Gold Bar.

I have such things in my backyard as monkey-puzzle, redwood, black spruce, pinyon-pine, western red-cedar, Cuyamaca cypress, podocarp, blue oak, shrub live-oak, leather oak, red yucca, indiangrass, blue-stem wheatgrass, big bluestem, and sagebrush. My wife is starting a magnolia collection.

In other words, it's actually possible to live in a state of zonal denial.