I live in the Inland Northwest, and I assure you what you mention is true. We have a forest, but generally the ground is brown and dry in summer, and the winters are long and hard. The Cascades are huge, and create an extensive rain shadow.

Seattle sits right next to the only temperate rainforest in the world, though. The sheer amount of plant life there is something to behold, and it doesn't get cold there all that long.

> Seattle sits right next to the only temperate rainforest in the world, though

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperate_rainforest

You might be interested in the section "Global distribution".

The rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula is beautiful and rich with plant life, but the South is a different beast. If you take an empty lot in the South and wait a year, it will be packed with growing things, sprawling and reaching toward the sun. The rate of growth is just insane.

So, a thriving insect ecosystem? Isn't that... the point?

What if you mow it short regularly?

We would have the same mess if we didn't mow. Things grow like crazy for six months here

In Seattle, I mow the lawn every two weeks for about six months of the year. When I lived in Florida, if I didn't mow at least once a week, almost all year, I would very quickly get a lawn too thick for my lawnmower to get through. The Gulf Coast is always waiting for a moment's inattention to revert back to the jungle that it desperately wants to be.

Dark 1/2 the year, our equinox is the same day as Alabama.