Kearneys Spring Flower Delivery

The birthday is today and you won't be there for the cake. A house, or a villa at Kingfisher Gardens on Spring Street, usually has a vase and someone at the door. A room in the Churches of Christ aged care home on Ruthven Street often has neither, so send an arrangement in its own container, room number in the notes. For an 80th or a 90th, size up; it tends to be shown off all week.

Anna's pick: an arrangement for the room, since it sits in wet foam and needs only a top-up; the Blush Pinks Arrangement With Chocolates is a lovely one. For a house, a hand-tied bunch, which stands up on the bench by itself while someone finds the vase.

Someone has looked after Mum for months, maybe years, and a card alone feels thin. Flowers for staff tend to go to reception or the nurses' station, so address them to the team on her wing, with her name on the card. Our thank you flowers are the place to start, and in my experience the chocolates go before the flowers do.

Anna, on a desk under the air-conditioning

Air-conditioning dries petals from the edges in. Chrysanthemums and carnations shrug it off, and roses do beautifully away from the vent. The Bright Arrangement With Chocolates arrives in foam, so nobody on a busy shift has to find a vase.

The notice is open on your phone and the service is on Ruthven Street. Put the funeral director, date, start time and chapel or graveside in the notes; the Garden of Remembrance covers 35 acres, and its name alone won't find the spot. On the card, With love to you all is enough. For the family's house the week after, our sympathy flowers for home arrive ready for a vase.

I learned about the notes at Allambe on the Gold Coast in 2008. The order said Allambe, eleven o'clock. I took a white sheath from our Marine Parade shop to the chapel I knew, and the service was in the other one. I made it across the lawn a minute before the hearse.

Lily buds are little water tanks, which is why a lily and rose sheath outlasts the service. It lies on the casket, goes home with the family, and with the stems recut the roses give four or five more days while the buds keep opening.

Some orders don't fit a heading: a neighbour two villas down, a teacher at Highlands Christian College on Hume Street, or no reason at all. Anna would rather you stopped scrolling and let the florist choose.

The Florist's Choice Bunch is built from whatever came in strongest at the market that week, so you get the pick of the cool room. With nothing to match, that's the brief a florist enjoys most.