Same Day Flower Delivery Brinsmead

Their birthday is today or tomorrow and you won't be there for it. Send the flowers to the house if someone will be in to take them. If they work at Freshwater Christian College, send there instead and put primary or secondary office in the notes; come December, the same goes for thank-you flowers for a teacher.

I learned how school offices work in December 2007, carrying a bunch into Kingscliff High on Oxford Street with Asha on my hip. The teacher was in class until the bell, the office ladies took Asha and forgot the flowers, and I stood at the counter for twenty minutes holding a bunch and no baby. In our experience not much has changed: a school office signs for flowers and holds them until the break.

Anna's pick: the Florists Choice Birthday Bunch for a house, and the Florists Choice Birthday Arrangement for a school desk.

A new baby, and you're reading the news on your phone from somewhere else. Still on the maternity ward at Cairns Hospital? Send the flowers there with the mother's full name and the ward, and in our experience the front desk signs for them and staff take them up. Once mum and baby are home in Brinsmead, the house gets a whole week of the flowers instead of a day or two on the ward. A card that works: "Welcome, little one. We can't wait to meet you." Flowers aren't a cuddle, and they'll still be in that room before you are.

Nothing that sheds, nothing heavily scented, nothing that needs tending. New baby flowers already in water, like Blue Mist Including Vase & Chocolates, ask nothing of anybody.

You heard about the death second-hand and the funeral is already set. For the service, give the funeral director's name and the time in the notes. The family home takes flowers any day that week, and in my experience they mean more once the visitors have gone. Something short on the card is enough: "Thinking of you all, with love."

Anna, on the vase in a busy house

Whoever puts them in water that week has a lot on, so it helps that a bunch like the Gorgeous Whites Bunch is two minutes' work. Strip every leaf that would sit under the waterline, because in this warmth submerged leaves turn the water within a day or two and the stems stop drinking.

Some orders have no heading: the neighbour who minded the kids, a friend with a rotten week.

Anna, if you can't choose: the Lovely Lilac & Lime Bunch. Soft enough for a hard week, bright enough for a thank-you.