Flower Delivery Coochin Creek, Same Day by the Strawberries

The birthday is today, they are somewhere between the house and the strawberry rows, and you are nowhere near either. Say which building is the house, as well as the number on the gate. Birthday flowers that reach the kitchen go in water. The same bunch left at the packing shed gets admired by the crew.

I know, because I was the bloke at the shed. In 2007 I drove a birthday order from our shop on Marine Parade up to a farm on the Cudgen plateau. Number on the gate, three sheds, no house in sight. I walked into the first shed holding the flowers and six pickers stopped work. One of them said, "Aw mate, you shouldn't have." The house was four hundred metres further up the track. I drove home with red dirt to the knees and a box of sweet potatoes I had not ordered. Some Roys Road farms are laid out the same way, so write "house at the back" in the notes.

Anna's call: on a working farm, pick something with backbone. Leucadendron and protea keep their shape on a warm kitchen bench for days, so look for them among the best-selling birthday flowers.

They went in for something and all you have is a ward number off a text. From Coochin Creek it could be Sunshine Coast University Hospital at Birtinya or Caboolture Hospital, so put the hospital and the ward on the order. Already home? The farm address and a mobile do it. Siobhan and I carried flowers into Tweed Hospital and John Flynn ourselves from 2006 to 2009, and the ward name is what got them past the front desk. On the card with get well flowers, short works: "Thinking of you. Home soon."

Anna, on what fits beside a hospital bed

A shared room has no spare bench, and nobody on the ward has time to go looking for a vase. A box arrangement with its own water is built for exactly that, and unscented stems keep the peace with the next bed. Ask whoever visits to top the foam up every few days and a box of hospital flowers goes the distance.

Someone has died and you are sorting flowers from a long way off. Beerwah Cemetery, at the town end of Roys Road, has no office on site, so graveside flowers go through the funeral director. For the family, sympathy flowers to the house a day or two later often land better than on the day. "With love, and so sorry" says enough on the card.

White and green read right at a graveside for most families. Out in the open, a sheaf or a wreath lies flat on the grass, where a tall vase tips over in a decent gust. Both are in the sympathy flowers range.

Plenty of orders have no occasion attached: the neighbour who pulled the ute out of the bog, a sister on her own out there all week, or nothing at all, just because. Anna has a view on this one.

Go Florist's Choice. When I built those I worked from whatever had come in best that morning, and in a hot week that meant the tougher stems in the bucket. There is no photo to match, so nothing goes in only because a picture says so. What arrives is at its peak, made for where it is going.