Birthday flowers in Lansing

The organizing fact of a Lansing birthday is that an unusual share of the recipients are at work in a building owned by the State of Michigan. The Michigan State Capitol at 100 North Capitol Avenue is the middle of it, and the working buildings fan out from there: the Romney Building at 111 South Capitol, which houses the governor's office; the Stevens T. Mason Building and Constitution Hall on West Allegan and West Ottawa, where the big departments sit; the Michigan Hall of Justice on West Ottawa for the Supreme Court and the court staff; the Richard H. Austin Building on West Allegan; and for legislative staff, the Anderson House Office Building on North Capitol and the Binsfeld Senate Office Building on Townsend. Around them is the association-and-lobbying corridor that fills the older buildings on Washtenaw, Allegan and Capitol, including Boji Tower on West Allegan, plus AF Group and Accident Fund in the converted Ottawa Street Power Station on North Grand and the Lansing Board of Water and Light headquarters down in REO Town on South Washington. None of these are apartment buildings, and that changes the order. A runner cannot walk a vase to a desk on the fourth floor of a state building unannounced. Put the building name, the floor or division, and a mobile number on the order, and understand that in several of them the delivery stops at a lobby or mail station and someone walks down for it. On session days the Capitol and the two legislative office buildings get slower, not faster.

Then there is the residential half, and in Lansing that means talking about weather before anything else. From December into March, an arrangement left on an unattended porch in this city is destroyed — not wilted, destroyed. Lansing Februarys run lows in the teens, and water in a vase on a concrete step turns to ice inside half an hour. The rule we apply: for any porch delivery between late November and early April, give us a phone number so the driver can hand it over, or send it to a workplace instead, or pick a window when somebody is actually home. July and August have the opposite problem on a south-facing step in full sun. The porch routes themselves are the ordinary geography of the city: Old Town and the north side in 48906, downtown proper in 48933, the eastside around the Michigan Avenue corridor in 48912, the westside and Moores Park area in 48915, south Lansing along Cedar Street and South Pennsylvania in 48910 and 48911, Waverly and Delta Township in 48917, then Holt 48842, Okemos 48864, Haslett 48840, East Lansing 48823 and 48824, DeWitt 48820, Grand Ledge 48837, Williamston 48895, Mason 48854, Charlotte 48813, St. Johns 48879, Eaton Rapids 48827 and Dimondale 48821.