Flower Delivery Yandina Creek, Same Day to the Acreage

It's Mum's birthday, or Nan's, and the address is a house you've only ever seen on Street View. If she's home that day, send it to the house (and if she works, and you know she'll be there, the office is fine too). Put the colour of the gate or the shed in the notes, and her mobile, so the florist can ring from the letterbox if the house is nowhere in sight. Start with our birthday flowers for Mum, or the best-selling birthday flowers if you'd rather go with what everyone else picks.

That mobile matters more than you'd think, and I found that out at the edge of floodwater. It was the wet of early 2008, a birthday bunch for a woman on a cane farm out past Tumbulgum, Asha not even one and grizzling in the car seat, and Tumbulgum Road had a lake across it at the low bit. A farmer in a ute on the far side flashed his lights at me, which I took as a friendly hello (it wasn't, it meant turn around). I only had her number because her son had written it on the order, so I rang her from the verge. She laughed, said the road does that every wet, and could I bring them Thursday. Thursday it was, two nights in the shop cooler, and she rang to say they'd kept better than the cake had. Yandina Creek is the same kind of country, flat old cane ground running down toward the Maroochy River, which is why I'd put that mobile in every time.

The reason they kept is Anna's department. In a florist's cooler, a few degrees above freezing, a stem barely breathes; in a shut car in January it breathes flat out. Two nights in the cold costs a bunch next to nothing.

A teacher who got your kid through Year 12, or a staff birthday someone put you in charge of. Coolum Beach Christian College, on Arcoona Road just off Yandina-Coolum Road, runs from Prep to Year 12, which is a lot of teachers and a lot of kids. In our experience schools take flowers at the front office and call the person down, so the full name, plus the year level or subject, is what gets them to the right one. For end-of-year thank you flowers or graduation flowers, send on a school day; once term has finished, their home is the safer address if you have it.

Anna, on a staffroom bench

A Friday delivery left at school sits in a shut, warm building until Monday with nobody topping it up. The stems drink the vase dry by Saturday night and the roses have dropped their heads by Monday. It wants to go home in the car on Friday afternoon. Carnations and chrysanthemums shrug off a dry staffroom; roses do beautifully as long as somebody tops up the water.

Someone at Yandina Creek has had a fall or an operation, and you heard about it second-hand. If they're still in hospital it's most likely Sunshine Coast University Hospital at Birtinya or Nambour General, and the ward name in the notes matters more than the room number. In our experience the flowers go to the ward's front desk and staff carry them in when there's a gap, which can take a while. If they're already home, send it to the house. For the card: "Rest up. The paddock can wait." or "Thinking of you, and hoping it's soon." There's more in our get well flowers and hospital flowers.

Anna's pick: for a shared ward I used to put together unscented stems, gerbera, chrysanthemum and scentless Asiatic lilies. An Oriental lily fills a room, which is glorious at home and a lot for the next bed.

Plenty of reasons to send flowers don't fit a heading. A thank you for a lift to the airport, a sorry about the dog, or nothing at all.

For a house on the flats I'd go with mixed flowers, with chrysanthemum doing the heavy lifting underneath and a few roses on top for the look. Chrysanthemums don't care about a warm room. They'll still be standing in the second week, long after the card has gone on the fridge.