‘She’s outlasted everybody but me,’ said her daughter-in-law.

According to the laws of supply and demand that guide daily news reporting, a 105th birthday isn’t always a story. But it can be if everything else is quiet on the appointed day.

It was quiet enough on Monday when Flora Holt, a resident of a North Hollywood convalescent home for the last six years, turned 105.

The convalescent home put out an invitation to the news media to attend the 2 p.m. party. Convalescent homes often do that when their residents reach 100 or more, hoping, no doubt, to attract some favorable notice through the testimony of someone who has made it so far under their care.

The secret of Flora Holt’s care is a little unorthodox.

Every week she eats two two-pound bags of M&Ms;, said Jo Ellen Zayer, administrator of the home. Zayer was willing enough to attribute Mrs. Holt’s current good health to that habit.

“She and Adelle Davis would disagree on this if Adelle was still with us,” Zayer said, in reference to the nationally known advocate of natural foods who died a few years ago at the age of 70. “Flora is still here, and Adelle has passed away.”

“She’s outlasted everybody but me,” said her daughter-in-law, Edna Jo Holt, who came to celebrate the day with her.

She said one of the dietitians took alarm upon seeing her feeding Mrs. Holt candy.

“Why?” she asked.

“She might get diabetes,” Holt said the nurse told her. “I said, ‘At her age, who cares?’ ”

Flora Holt’s use of sugar has done no obvious damage. She is both slender and very much in charge of herself.

Wearing a blue print dress and a white knit shawl, she waited in the television room before the party began, resting her head on a propped-up hand with her eyes closed.

About 20 residents assembled for the party. Some wheeled themselves in. Others were pushed by visiting husbands or wives or by young nurses in white, who spoke to their charges in English and to each other in Spanish.

At 2 p.m. a nurse named Beatriz Chinchilla put her hands on Flora’s shoulders, bringing her to life with a jolt.

“Today is your birthday,” she said.

“Who’s birthday is it?” Mrs. Holt asked in a loud and clear voice.

“Yours,” the nurse said.

“Ah,” Mrs. Holt said with a quick smile.

A photographer who was standing in the background raised a camera.

“Nana, riase, “ the nurse said, urging her to smile.

Though she was married to an American and spent much of her life in Los Angeles, Mrs. Holt responded to her native tongue. She gave the high-pitched call of the vaquero.

“Ah, ha, ha.”

“Una cancion, “ the nurse suggested.

On that cue, pianist Grace Mayor struck up “El Rancho Grande. “

Mrs. Holt sang out snappily:

Alla en el rancho grande. Alla donde vivia.

Habia una rancharita que alegre me decia.

She finished the verse before the pianist was through the first bar. The nurses clapped. Then they gave her a bouquet of red carnations and her birthday present--two two-pound bags of M&Ms.;

“Flora, you have a big cake,” the nurse at her side said as others put it in front of her.

The nurse guided her index finger into a swirl of icing and from there to her mouth.

She licked it off.

Several nurses and staff gathered around the cake, and magically the candles went out.

The pianist played “Happy Birthday.”

“Grace, you going to play something Latina,” one of the nurses said.

Grace did and Mrs. Holt sang again:

La cucaracha, la cucaracha, ya no puede caminar.

Porque no tiene, porque le falta, marihuana que fumar.

The nurses giggled over the vulgar verse of the familiar song. Mrs. Holt rested her head on her hand again and almost seemed to sleep.

Her daughter-in-law looked concerned.

“She’s getting quite bored with this whole thing right now,” the younger Holt observed. “She’d really rather go take a nap.”

Nobody else thought so.

The nurses cut up the cake and handed pieces around to the other residents. The pianist played “Happy Birthday” again.

Edna Jo Holt walked up behind Mrs. Holt and took her hand.

“Who are you?” Flora asked.

“I’m right here, Nana,” Edna Jo replied.

“Are you my daughter?”

“I am, honey.”

“Do you love me?”

“I love you.”

A two-man television camera crew walked into the room just in time to catch that cameo with their hot lights illuminating mother and daughter.

Then they panned the camera around the room at the other residents for a few seconds.

“You see anything else?” the young cameraman asked the soundman. The soundman shook his head. They left.

Flora Holt rested her head on her hand.

Just then, another newspaper photographer came in.

He asked Edna Jo to bend over with her face close to her mother-in-law’s. Then he put the bouquet in Flora’s arms. Not liking the way it looked, he flopped it to the other side, scratching her face with the baby’s breath.

“Smile, Nana,” the nurses urged.

“Huh,” she said, and then “Ah, ha, ha,” again.

A nurse tried to feed her another piece of cake. She didn’t want it.

“I want a towel,” she said.

A nurse wiped her hand.

“OK,” Edna Jo interjected. “Are you getting tired?”

“Are they going to have a party really?” Flora asked.

Then they wheeled her away to her nap.