A big white poster catches my eye as I drive along Herring Brook Road in Eastham. It is adorned with images of butterflies, sunshine, and pink flowers, with lettering that reads “Flowers for Sale.” A striped umbrella shades a little cart, displaying jars of flowers of varying sizes.

Before arriving here for a summer of reporting, I had never seen a roadside flower stand. While I can’t imagine an unattended D.I.Y. front-yard flower shop in my urban San Francisco Bay Area childhood neighborhood, carts like this one seem natural here. I decided to knock on some doors to learn more about this part of the Outer Cape landscape.