Flowers for Delano, MN

Every small town has a signature day; Delano's is the Fourth of July. The community has thrown Minnesota's oldest continuous Independence Day celebration since the 1800s, and for one week the whole river town turns out along Bridge Avenue for the parade — which is exactly when the flower calendar spikes with reunion centerpieces and porch arrangements for out-of-town family. The rest of the year Delano reads like the fast-growing west-metro town it has become: new subdivisions off Highway 12 filling with young families, graduation season loading the cooler with Tiger orange and black each May, and steady runs of get-well and sympathy work tied to Buffalo and the near metro. The South Fork of the Crow River threads the center of it, and the delivery grid follows the highway east toward Montrose and Rockford and north to Buffalo.

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