Flowers for King George, VA

King George County is a long, quiet wedge of Virginia between the Rappahannock and the Potomac, the kind of place where the county seat is a courthouse, a few churches, and a cluster of shops strung along Route 3. Head east and the road runs toward the Northern Neck; head north on Route 301 and you reach Dahlgren, where the Navy has tested ordnance on the river since 1918 and where much of the county's paycheck still comes from. In between are the farm communities — Sealston, Comorn, Owens, Passapatanzy — and the riverfront lanes dropping to the Potomac shore and Caledon's old-growth woods. There is no hospital in the county and no shopping mall; a flower delivery here is a real drive, and the person making it needs to know which gravel road turns into which and how long the base gate takes at the wrong hour. That local knowledge is the whole point.

Other Virginia cities.