Flower Delivery to Andergrove, Houses and Oak Street Units

You won't be there for Mum's birthday, so the flowers go instead. At a house, a mobile number in the notes covers the days nobody's in. Eureka Cascade Gardens on Oak Street is a gated village of units off covered walkways, so there it's her unit number. I learned why the unit number matters around 2009 at St Joseph's Village, Tweed Heads South, with Asha, not quite two, carrying the card and no villa number. Half the neighbours came out to look at Asha before we found the right door. Try birthday flowers for Mum, or 80th birthday flowers for a big one.

A vase works at Oak Street, where she has her own kitchen. Keep the flowers about one and a half times the height of the vase: any taller and the vase is top-heavy on a narrow bench, any shorter and the flowers look sparse.

Someone has died, and the first question is where the flowers go. For the service, give us the funeral home and the time: in our experience City Funerals on Sydney Street and Mackay Funerals on Alfred Street both take funeral flowers in beforehand. On the lawn at Mt Bassett Cemetery a wreath or sheath lies flat where a vase would tip. Later, send flowers to the family's home. It's a small thing against what has happened, and families do remember who sent it. "Thinking of you all" is enough on the card.

Anna on lilies after the service

Lilies open one bud at a time. If the family takes a White Lily & Rose Sheath home after the service, a bucket of water keeps the closed buds opening for days.

Someone's unwell and you don't know where they'll be. In Andergrove that's often home after a visit to the clinics on Celeber Drive, so get well flowers to the house are the usual call. For a ward, add the ward and bed: Mackay Base Hospital and the Mater Private Hospital both tend to take hospital flowers at the desk. "Rest up and mend fast" covers the card.

Anna's pick: an arrangement in its own wet foam, which needs no vase at the house or on the ward. Water in foam goes stale within a few days and the stems rot from the base, so draw the old water off with a baster and refill.

Plenty of orders don't fit a heading: a new roster at the mine, a rough week, no reason at all. Anna's view is simple.

Go natives. The Australian Natives Bunch leans on woody stems that last about a week or more in a warm Mackay room and take wet-season humidity without a mark. Split the base of each thick stem a couple of centimetres so it can drink. The rest of the native flowers take the same split at the base.