Flowers for Ashley, ND

Ashley owes its character to the Germans-from-Russia families who broke this prairie in the 1880s, and more than a century on that heritage still colors the flower orders that come through the county seat of McIntosh County. Confirmations at the Lutheran and Reformed churches, wedding anniversaries counted in decades on the coteau farms, and the sympathy work that carries a close-knit German community through its losses — these are the steady beats, punctuated by graduation flowers each spring for the Ashley Public School and holiday arrangements for the care-center residents who no longer keep their own gardens. The town itself is a compact grid on ND-11; beyond it the coteau rolls south toward the South Dakota border in a patchwork of grain fields and cattle sections, and the delivery map follows those two-lane roads out to Wishek, Venturia, and Zeeland.

Other North Dakota cities.