Flowers for Branford, CT

Down at the Stony Creek dock, the tour boats idle between runs through the Thimble Islands — a scatter of pink-granite knobs whose quarries once supplied stone for the Statue of Liberty's pedestal — and the village behind the dock still gets flowers the old way, handed over a fence rail with a name on the card. Branford is a one-ZIP town holding a dozen small worlds: the broad green at the center ringed by steeples, the marble front of the Blackstone library, a restaurant row that fills on summer nights; Short Beach's cottage lanes toward the East Haven line; Indian Neck and Pine Orchard tracing the water along Route 146; Branford Hills up by the highway. Same-day delivery covers all of it, and the quirks that defeat national carriers — private beach-association roads, seasonal cottages numbered out of order — are exactly what a local shop already has memorized.

Other Connecticut cities.