Same Day Flower Delivery Pelican Waters

It's Mum's seventieth, or their fiftieth anniversary, and you're in Sydney, Melbourne or England, nowhere near the cake. A canal house is simple, a front door and often someone home. The complexes near the marina have a gate or a lift, so add the unit number and a mobile, and pick the date as it falls in Queensland.

I learned that last bit on the shop phone in Kingscliff in 2008. A woman rang from England, late at night her time, for her parents' fortieth, "for tomorrow". It only clicked when I read the card back to her: "sorry we can't be there today". Her tomorrow was already our today. Andrew had the roses through the gate of a complex on Mariners Drive East, in the Anchorage Islands at Tweed Heads, by three, and her dad rang her at five in the morning, English time, to say thank you. She said it was the best call she'd ever been woken up by.

Anna's tip: roses sometimes turn up with a couple of scuffed outer petals. Those are guard petals, left on to protect the bloom on the way, and whoever unpacks them can pull them off. The rose underneath is the fresh one.

She's settled into care, the Sunday visits are someone else's now, and you'd like her to have something on the windowsill from you. At St Mary's Aged Care on Verdon Street, in our experience flowers go to reception first, and her full name and room number get them down the hall to her. If she's still at home on the canal, send them there instead. For her 80th, or for no reason at all, "Thinking of you, Mum. Save me a biscuit Sunday." says enough.

A box with foam in it is its own vase, and low and wide suits a bedside table, because a tall one tips as soon as she reaches past it for her glass. Chrysanthemums and carnations take air conditioning in their stride and often go two weeks.

Dad's gone, and Mum is on her own in the house on the canal for the first time in fifty years. Funeral flowers usually go through the funeral director, so add their name and the service time. Flowers for the house tend to land better a week on, once everyone has flown home and it's gone quiet. They won't fix anything, I know. She'll still look at them every morning. For the card: "So sorry we're so far away. All our love."

Anna, on white for a quiet house

Whites, creams and soft greens sit quietly in a room like that, where bright colour competes. White lisianthus is a good one. The buds keep opening down the stem, so the bunch goes on for a week and a half or more.

Sometimes there's no occasion at all. You just haven't seen them since Christmas, and a Sunday phone call only goes so far. Anna has a favourite for exactly that.

Soft pinks and creams with a little lilac through them suit nearly any room, and nobody has to guess anyone's taste. Pink flowers with roses and lisianthus in them go a week or more on a table out of direct sun.