Same Day Flowers to Coombabah, Every Street off Oxley Drive

It's Mum's birthday and you can't be there. Put a mobile that will answer in the notes, and somewhere out of the sun to leave the flowers if she's out, the carport or behind the side gate. Start with our birthday flowers for mum.

Andrew drove a lot of the northern Gold Coast runs out of our Kingscliff shop in 2007 and 2008, back when the Gold Coast was among the biggest delivery areas the shop had. One evening in 2008 he stood on a doorstep in Rain Tree Glen, where the street meets the lakelands, holding a birthday bunch while the midges found him well before the birthday girl did (he still swears there were a thousand of them, and I believe him, I saw his ankles). He has kept insect repellent in the car ever since, and these days it mostly comes out on Tuesday nights at Carrara Indoor Stadium, where he drives our two girls for netball and stays to watch.

Whoever unwraps the flowers should take a centimetre off each stem on a slant before they go into water. A stem cut flat sits on the bottom of the vase and seals over. The angled cut keeps the plumbing open.

You can't visit this week, and Nan's phone calls are getting shorter. At Bupa Runaway Bay on Pine Ridge Road or Paradise Lakes Care Centre on Oxley Drive, put her full name and room number in the notes; in our experience reception takes the flowers through. Choose something boxed or already in a vase, so nobody goes hunting for one. Flowers are a poor stand-in for a visit, and they'll still be the first thing she shows everyone. Try our thinking-of-you flowers, or 80th birthday flowers if there's cake.

Anna, on a boxed arrangement

Floral foam dries from the top down, so the stems standing highest lose their water first and start to droop. Whoever visits her should pour a small cup of water into the foam twice a week, and the top of the box keeps looking like its first morning.

Someone you knew in Coombabah has died, and the first question is where the flowers should go. For a service at White Lady Funerals on Nind Street in Southport, or at Allambe Memorial Park in Nerang, choose funeral flowers and put the venue (at Allambe, which chapel), the service time and the name of the person who has died in the notes. If the service has been and gone, sympathy flowers for home go to the family home instead.

Anna's pick: whites and creams with soft greens. They sit quietly beside a photo without competing with it, and any chrysanthemums among them hold their faces right through a warm afternoon.

A housewarming in Coombabah, a thank-you to Mum's neighbour who fed the cat, a Tuesday with no reason at all. Over to Anna for this one.

The Australian Native Arrangement arrives boxed, so nobody needs a vase. The protea holds its shape for two to three weeks and the woody leucadendrons go three or four. After that, pull the leucadendrons out and stand them in a dry jug, and they look nearly as good for months.