Flowers for South Milwaukee, WI

South Milwaukee is a factory town that happens to sit on one of the best pieces of Lake Michigan shoreline in the county. For more than a century the north end has meant Bucyrus — the giant mining-shovel works now run by Caterpillar — and the paychecks from those shops built the tight rows of bungalows that fill the middle of the city. Milwaukee Avenue is the spine, with the restored Downtown Theatre, the corner taverns, and the small storefronts; a few blocks east the land gives way to Grant Park, the wooded ravines of the Seven Bridges Trail, and the Oak Creek Parkway running along the water. It is a compact, walkable city wedged between Cudahy to the north and Oak Creek to the south, which makes flower delivery here quick and predictable — a get-well bouquet for a retiree near the park, a birthday arrangement for a bungalow off Marquette Avenue, a congratulations piece dropped at the plant gate.

Other Wisconsin cities.