Order Flowers to Middle Ridge

Someone's turning fifty or sixty, the family's at the house, and you can't be. Send the flowers there even if lunch is at the golf club on Rowbotham Street, because a function room on the day is a busy place. For a 50th or a 60th, the Bright Bunch + Sparkling holds its own among the presents.

Anna, on the vase it'll need

A wrapped bunch comes without one, so choose a vase with a little room in it: too wide and the stems flop, too narrow and they crush.

They've just moved into an apartment at The Ninth beside the golf course, or a house further along, and every bench has a box on it. A room at BlueCare on Stenner Street is the same problem in miniature: no spare vase, and nowhere much to put one.

Another golf course, another new address: in 2008 I took a housewarming arrangement from our Marine Parade shop to a lady in a brand new villa beside Tweed Golf Club at Banora Point. Unit 12, said the order (there were three Unit 12s, one in each block). I met two very polite men in slippers before I found her, and she'd watched the whole search from her kitchen window. I've looked for a block number on every unit address since.

Anna's pick: the Blissful Botanics Arrangement. Like most arrangements, it stands in its own container on wet foam (a metal cube, in this case), so nobody hunts for a vase. A splash of water into the foam every couple of days keeps it going.

The notice says Middle Ridge Uniting Church on Stenner Street, or Burstows on Ruthven Street. Send a wreath or sheath such as the White Funeral Wreath to the service, with the start time and funeral director in the notes, and something for the family home a day or two later. "Thinking of you all" is plenty on the card. It feels like the least you can do and the most you can manage, both at once.

On the bench we built wreaths last. A wreath spends the whole service out of water, and every hour it waits in a back room, the outer petals soften a little more.

Plenty of orders don't fit a heading: a thank-you to the neighbour who fed the dog, a friend's bad week, or no reason at all. Anna has one answer for the lot.

Send the Natives Flowers With A Vase. Woody natives go a fortnight or more in an ordinary lounge room, suit a man or a woman of any age, and arrive already standing in water.