The everyday routes here follow how the city actually sits. Both Evansville benches are on the north and west sides, so 47710 and 47711 — Kratzville, North Park, the streets off Diamond Avenue and First Avenue — are the quickest addresses in the market, frequently a fifteen-minute round trip. Downtown and 47708 take in the Haynie's Corner arts district, where the First Friday evenings bring the wedge of old streets to life, and Willard Library, the 1885 building on the north edge of downtown that is the city's oldest. North of there, Garvin Park holds Bosse Field, a ballpark from 1915 that still hosts the Evansville Otters and is among the oldest in continuous use anywhere in the country. 47713 and 47714 cover Bayard Park, the Washington Avenue historic blocks and the grid along Covert and Vann. 47715 is the East Side — Green River Road, the streets behind Eastland, Lincolnshire, and Wesselman Woods, a stand of old forest inside the city limits. 47712 runs west past Mesker Park Zoo and Botanic Garden out to USI on University Boulevard, and the West Side proper is the Franklin Street corridor and the neighborhoods around the Reitz Bowl. 47720 and 47725 climb north toward Darmstadt. Beyond the county, the radius covers Newburgh, Chandler and Boonville in Warrick, Mount Vernon, Poseyville and New Harmony in Posey, and Princeton, Fort Branch and Haubstadt in Gibson.
Four practical notes and then the card. Season matters more than you would think. The best month for a no-reason bouquet in this city is February, or the grey stretch either side of it: the Ohio Valley winter here is low cloud and wet rather than dramatic, there is no holiday in sight, and a bright arrangement standing on a kitchen counter in mid-February does more work here than the identical thing does in May. The quiet weeks after the Fall Festival in October are the runner-up, when the West Side goes back to normal and the year starts feeling long. Weather still sets the rules at the door: a July afternoon in the nineties with Ohio Valley humidity finishes anything left on a sunny step, and an ice event in January means nothing is left outside at all, so a mobile number for the recipient is the most useful field on the order. Wrapped or vased is a genuine choice here — with no event to dress for, a hand-tied bundle handed over at the door is perfectly fine, and it is what the shops will do if you do not specify. If the recipient is south of the river in Henderson, Robards or Spottsville, Shaw's Flowers Inc at 423 2nd Street is the nearer bench and nothing has to cross the US 41 twin bridges. And the card: the one thing a just-because bouquet cannot survive is a generic message. Do not write *thinking of you*. Write the actual reason — *you have had a rotten month*, *I drove past your old house*, *thank you for sitting with Dad*. That is the whole gift; the flowers are the envelope.