Mother's Day in Auckland: an autumn Sunday for lilies and roses
Mother's Day in Auckland falls on the second Sunday of May, the same date the United States and more than forty other countries keep, though here it lands in late autumn and is not a public holiday. New Zealand's own peonies wait until mid-October and run to mid-December, which leaves lilies, roses, hydrangea and gerbera to carry the month, and each one raises a question worth answering before you order.
Lilies at a villa door, and the cat to ask about first
A lily opens wide, and its pollen drops onto whatever sits underneath. Once the petals are fully open the anthers lift out with tweezers or clean fingers, and if pollen has already landed on fabric, sticky tape lifts it off; rubbing only grinds it in.
The bigger question is the household, not the tablecloth. Every part of a lily is toxic to cats, including the water left standing in the vase, and can cause acute kidney failure. Where a cat lives in the house, hydrangea or a rose bouquet is the safer gift.
The Lily Bouquet "Airy" is one option in this style; where a cat is at home, ask the florist about something else before the order goes through.
Ask for French roses and you are asking for a fold, not a breed: the florist works the outer petals back by hand so a tight bud opens into something fuller. Jumilia, by contrast, is its own named rose, with a bud up to seven centimetres long, pale at the base and rimmed in pink, and it can hold for up to two weeks with good care.
Colour carried meaning in Victorian flower dictionaries, though the lists never quite agreed: red stood for passion, pink for a gentler affection, white for purity. None of that is a rule today, more a starting point for choosing between a red rose bouquet and a paler one for a mother.
Naomi is a red rose bouquet built along those lines, a plain choice where the fold and the colour matter more than anything else on the card.
Hydrangea, gerbera or a pot that stays past autumn
Hydrangea takes up water through its petals, not just its stem, so a single head drinks more than most other cut flowers need. If it droops, turning the bloom face down into cool water for an hour or two usually brings it back; beyond four or five hours in that position, it simply stops helping.
Neither a box nor a basket asks for a vase: the stems rest in floral foam instead, and foam soaked evenly every day holds the arrangement about as well as water in a jug. Box "Miroslava" and Pot "Stefania" both skip the vase question outright, and so does anything from flowers in boxes or a flower basket.
Getting a bouquet to the door is its own small job in autumn, and what a wet May asks of a bouquet is worth a look before the day itself.
A card she keeps: Mother's Day flower delivery in Auckland
A handwritten card comes free with the bouquet, and it is worth using. Anna Jarvis, who pushed for the holiday in the first place, argued with the printed-card industry, on the grounds that a shop-bought card said only one thing: that writing your own had felt like too much trouble.
Mother's Day is the busiest Sunday of the year for the florists, so delivery windows widen and no courier promises an exact minute. Order a few days ahead for a chosen date and time slot; orders are accepted in any city zone. The delivery zones page has the rest. Before the courier sets off, a photo of the finished bouquet goes out, and there is still time to ask for a change before delivery starts.
Where the bouquet is headed often settles the choice faster than anything else for a first Mother's Day order here: a villa with a curious cat takes lilies off the list before the rest of the options even come up. French roses and Jumilia are two rose options, a French fold for a fuller open bloom and Jumilia for its pink-edged bud. A balloon, chocolate or a small soft toy from gifts to go with the bouquet rounds off the parcel without another trip to the shops.