Flowers Delivered to Warabrook Today, Cake or Condolence

You won't be there when they cut the cake, so the flowers go instead. Most likely that's a house. Put a mobile in the notes, and if nobody answers the door, the florist will generally ring that number and leave the flowers with a neighbour or in the shade. An office on Warabrook Boulevard needs the company and the level. Start with our birthday flowers, or if it's Dad's birthday, the ones picked for him.

Anna's pick: the Florists Choice Birthday Arrangement. It's built in wet foam, so there's no hunting for a vase, and the foam keeps the stems drinking if the arrangement sits on a shaded step for an hour.

Mum's at the BaptistCare Warabrook Centre on Casuarina Circuit and you can't get there this week. Birthday or just hello, the order's the same: full name and room number in the notes, and in our experience the staff walk the flowers through. If she's in dementia care, say so, because that part of a home tends to sit behind a door only staff can open. I learnt that at Feros Village in Byron Bay in 2008, holding roses between two locked doors and pressing every button but the right one. A carer let me in eventually. Send thinking-of-you flowers, or, if it's a milestone, 80th birthday flowers.

Anna, on lilies and cardigans

If Mum would rather lilies, the Pastel Pink Lilies & Roses Arrangement is the one, and whoever visits next should pinch the anthers off as each lily opens. Dry pollen bonds to a cardigan for good.

Someone has died and the service is this week. Funeral flowers go to the service, with the funeral director's name and the start time in the notes. That might be the White Lady Funerals chapel in Mayfield or graveside at Sandgate Cemetery, both on Maitland Road. Sympathy flowers for the house land better a few days on. Nobody at a funeral counts the flowers. Afterwards, the family reads every card twice. "Thinking of you all, with love" is enough.

The purple in the Wreath With White & Purple Tones is statice, a papery flower with next to no water in it, so it looks the same at the end of the service as it did when it arrived that morning.

Some orders are smaller than a birthday or a funeral: a friend home from Calvary Mater, a carer who's been good to Dad, the neighbour on Elata Way who fed the cat. If your person is still in hospital, at the Mater or John Hunter, add the full name and ward, and check with the family first. From what we've seen, some of the Mater's cancer wards don't take fresh flowers. Browse get well flowers or thank-you flowers, or take Anna's pick.

The Beautiful Pastels Bunch comes in its own short glass. Its lily buds open around day three or four, as the gerberas start to tire, so it still fills the glass into the second week.