Hibiscus

More flowers: not white roses this time, but gumamela. Hibiscus, to the rest of the world.

For some strange reason, we never had the five-petalled variety in our backyard,--you know, the kind you see Jasmine Trias, Lilo and the Hawaii-Five-O extras wear behind their ears-- all we always had were this multilayered ones, something that's always frustrated me no end. See, it wasn't such a bad deal when you're trying to blow bubbles during summer, because this kind makes better bubbles. But it is annoying in first grade when your teacher tells you to bring a gumamela flower, because your lesson will be on the parts of a flower, and you're the only one who can't find the calyx and pistil and stamen and whatever else through all those petals, because you're the ony one whose gumamela isn't the single-layer kind.

Anyway. There was this abscess that I thought was a boil growing by my spine since June. It wouldn't go away, despite three dermatologists. It'd shrink a bit, then come back after a day or two, worse than ever. The second one was alarmed enough to take a biopsy. The third one, too. I think it got worse from my stress at hearing that word. Biopsy. Scary.

So when last biopsy turned out nothing, I finally told my mom. She sighed, took a look and picked out a couple of gumamela flowers, crushed them with her fingers and packed them onto the abscess. Three days later, the bloody darn bump is gone. Go figure.

This bunch is from the last day, I think. After three days of picking them, I thought I might as well draw them.