Tanka 141
Let’s buy some of them,
these end-of-season flowers
the deep-discounted
tired and ragged in their pots
still hoping for a garden
8/1/19
Haiku 731
grudgingly at best
but all of his coworkers
signed his birthday card
8/1/19
Haiku 732
with glum expressions
the swimmers wrapped in towels
wait out the thunder
8/1/19
Claudia McGill Writes Poetry, Did You Know That? 
The first poem could have been about me about 18 years ago when I was creating a garden from scratch. Not having a remotely green thumb and the garden plot being a mess because it had just been a construction site, I did not want to invest too much in plants so I would adopt these bedraggled, half-dead plants and hope for the best. They almost always came back to life even under my less than stellar care. That habit formed, I then felt compelled to keep adopting the plants nobody else wanted.
I feel the same way. We have a large bush outside we bought for $2 at the garden center when it was about 8″ tall and it has thrived. I have thought of its beginnings often and marvel at how it has taken hold.