The people who get flowers for no reason in this city are a predictable and lovely list. Teachers, first of all — Guilford County Schools is one of North Carolina's largest districts, and a plant to a front office in the second week of February, when nothing is happening and everyone is tired, is remembered for years. Nurses and techs coming off a shift at Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital on North Elm Street or at Wesley Long on the west side, where a small arrangement left at a unit's break room does what a card cannot. Grandparents and great-aunts at Friends Homes near New Garden Road, at Well-Spring on the northwest side, or at River Landing at Sandy Ridge out in Colfax, where the front desk takes the handoff and a staff member walks it down the hall — and where an unexpected delivery is the most interesting thing that happens on a Wednesday. Neighbors: specifically the one who came over with a chainsaw after the last ice storm took a limb off your driveway, which in Greensboro is not a hypothetical. And students at North Carolina A&T and UNC Greensboro in the dead middle of a semester, when nobody is sending anything.
Everyday logistics are simpler than a holiday delivery, and two sentences of thought cover almost all of it. At a house, point the driver at whichever door keeps the sun off it — July and August here are in the nineties before you count the humidity, and an unshaded afternoon stoop is the one place an arrangement genuinely dies. In the rental belts — Battleground Avenue, Wendover, West Market and Spring Garden Street — the leasing office is the target, because there are no doormen in this city and an unattended entry is a coin flip. On campus, the hall's own street address is the only deliverable one: the two university mail codes, 27411 for A&T and 27412 for UNCG, cannot take a vase. At a workplace, a company name, a suite and a phone number are enough for a downtown counter or for the shared entrance at Revolution Mill on Yanceyville Street, while the fenced sites on National Service Road and the controlled gates at Piedmont Triad International want a recipient who already knows something is coming. And say outright whether the driver may leave it unsigned, and whether they may call first.
Two more Greensboro notes that shape everyday sending. First, the seasons here give you obvious excuses if you want one: the dogwoods and redbuds come out along the older streets in late March and early April, the same weeks oak and pine pollen turns every car on Battleground Avenue yellow; summer is long and heavy; October is the best month in the Piedmont and nobody ever regrets flowers in it; and January brings the ice weeks, when a delivered plant is the only bright thing in a gray house. Second, the widened 60-mile radius quietly does the hard part of long-distance everyday sending: if the Greensboro benches are shut or short on stems, the same order gets built in High Point, Jamestown, Kernersville, Burlington, Winston-Salem, Reidsville or Asheboro, which is also how somebody here reaches a cousin one town over without having to think about it. One order, one card message, whichever bench can actually get there today.