On shoe flowers: a haibun

A photo taken by Chevrefeuille.
Heeding Haiku with Chevrefeuille - In which
we write a haibun based on the given photograph.

Hibiscus sounds rather boring, doesn't it? Back when I was a wee lass running about our neighbourhood in a smocking frock and sniffing the flowers, the shoe flower, as we love calling it, always beckoned me. I loved their colours -- yellow, red, pink. They burst open onto our front yard from the neighbouring plot, and often, when my adventurous cousin came to visit, we would snatch one off the plant and run. I didn't have much hair back then (not that I do so now either) but it was definitely a flower I liked to tuck in behind my ear while traipsing about. I always thought, when I had a home of my own, I would grow a shoe flower plant. However, I have yet to realise that thought. I don't really have green fingers, you see. It would likely wither away and die under my careless ministrations. My husband always says I torture my plants by showing them immense love for awhile and then neglecting them for a while longer. Sounds dreadful. But he looks after them. However, he isn't one for flowers; it's the leafy plants that survive in my little apartment. But some day I will grow a shoe flowering plant.

a thought, a dream

that slowly but surely blooms

in a red shoe flower