Nothing has to have happened. A just-because bouquet in West Palm Beach usually marks something that has no calendar entry at all: the neighbor who ran a chainsaw down your driveway the morning after a storm, the friend who drove your mother to an appointment, the person who watched your house through a Florida summer while you were gone, the sister who picks up the phone. This county produces those debts at an unusual rate, partly because so many households here are split across two states and partly because storm season makes everyone briefly dependent on whoever lives nearest. Two moments in the calendar carry most of the volume. In November, when the population swells and half the neighborhood reopens shutters, a welcome-back bouquet is the local version of a housewarming. In April, when the same people close up and drive north, a safe-travels arrangement does the same work in reverse. In between, June to November, the honest reason for most bouquets on this grid is simpler: someone was thinking about someone else on a Tuesday, and did something about it.
The everyday map is where this page earns its keep. El Cid, Flamingo Park, Grandview Heights and Prospect Park in 33401 and 33405 are the historic blocks between Dixie Highway and Flagler Drive — 1920s bungalows and Mediterranean-revival houses with porches deep enough to shade an arrangement, and the easiest front-door handoffs on the grid. SoSo, south of Southern Boulevard along Olive and Dixie, runs the same way, and Antique Row along South Dixie Highway threads right through it. North of downtown, Northwood and Northwood Hills in 33407 have their own village of shops off Broadway. West of I-95 the housing stock changes: 33409, 33411, 33413, 33415 and 33417 are condo and gated-community country. Century Village off Okeechobee Boulevard in 33417 is the address type to get right: the buildings there carry letters instead of numbers, and an order missing the letter and the unit sends a driver looping past a great many identical facades. Golden Lakes and Bear Lakes work the same way at smaller scale. Further out, Wellington in 33414, Royal Palm Beach, Greenacres in 33463 and 33467, Lake Worth Beach in 33460 and 33461, Palm Springs and Lantana are plain suburban runs, most of them minutes from three of the five shops.