Same Day Flower Delivery Palmview, There This Afternoon

The baby's here, you're not, and the flowers are going instead. First work out where she is. If she's still on the maternity ward at Sunshine Coast University Hospital in Birtinya, flowers for the hospital go to the ward, so put her name and the ward in the notes. If she's already home in Palmview, give us the house number. A description of the house won't do, and I learned that the embarrassing way.

In 2008 I drove new-baby flowers from our Marine Parade shop in Kingscliff up to Varsity Lakes on the Gold Coast, to the townhouse with the pram out the front. Every second townhouse on that street had a pram out the front. The first door opened on a woman with a very new baby on her shoulder (I'd had Asha the year before, so I knew exactly how tired she was). She said they were gorgeous, read the card, and they weren't for her. Taking flowers back off a woman holding a newborn is something I'd rather not do twice. The right house was four doors down. Harmony, the new estate most of Palmview lives in, has streets a lot like that one, so the number and a mobile in the notes save everyone the walk.

Anna's call: keep it soft on scent and free of loose pollen while the baby is this new. Oriental lilies are glorious a few weeks on, anthers pinched. For now, go for a boxed arrangement. It sits in its own wet foam, needs no vase, and nobody has to change its water for days.

She sold the family house (the one you grew up in, probably) for a villa at Aveo Sunset Palms on Harmony Boulevard, and now she's a few streets from the grandkids and a long way from you. Mum's birthday flowers go to her villa door, so put the villa number and her mobile in the notes. In our experience the florist rings that mobile if she's out. A seventieth or any other year, same rule.

Chrysanthemums suit a villa. They don't mind a warm room or the fruit bowl, the leaves yellow long before the bloom gives up, and about two weeks on a sideboard is ordinary for them. Hard to beat for a birthday that has to last.

Last week of term, a teacher who got your kid through the year, and a thank-you you'd rather not juggle through the gate at drop-off. Send it to the school. Palmview State Primary and Palmview State Special School share College Drive, and the Secondary College is on Village Green Boulevard, so name the school, the teacher and the class. From what our florists tell us, the office holds thank-you flowers and sends word to the room, so the earlier in the day your order goes in, the better. Something bright suits the end of the year, daisies especially, and it's a nice thing for a teacher to carry out past the other parents.

Anna, on the ride home at three o'clock

Whatever you send sits in a classroom all afternoon, then rides home in a car that's been in the sun since eight. A shut car in summer can pass forty-five degrees, and an hour in that costs flowers days in the vase. By the weekend the petals are soft at the edges. Whatever you pick, a boxed version keeps the stems in wet foam and upright on the seat, and it gets home in far better shape than a wrapped bunch.

The keys to a new house off Peter Crosby Way, a new job, a rough week, a friend who needs a win. None of those need a category, and you don't need to pick one.

Anna's pick, whenever nobody could decide, was Australian natives. Protea and leucadendron don't care about the fruit bowl and handle a warm room better than most, leucadendron goes three weeks and more in clean water in my experience, and once the soft stems are finished the banksia and leucadendron dry where they stand and stay on the shelf.