The Green House

Every afternoon at three, when the sky above Homestead turns the color of a bruised plum, Silas Thorne retreats to his shade-house. It is a structure of bent PVC pipe and black shade cloth, tucked behind a stucco home that smells permanently of damp peat and cedar shavings. Thorne, a sixty-eight-year-old retired municipal water engineer, spends his days in this artificial drizzle, tending to three hundred specimens of Dendrophylax lindenii, the ghost orchid. The orchid, famously elusive and stubborn, has occupied him since his retirement. He speaks of them with the dry, clinical affection of a high-school chemistry teacher, though his methods are almost entirely mystical.

The paradox of Thorne’s obsession is that he loathes the swamp itself. He has not set foot in the Fakahatchee Strand in twenty years, preferring to replicate its humid, mosquito-thick atmosphere using an elaborate framework of automated misters and diesel-powered fans. He relies on highly technical salinity meters to gauge the water, yet he swears that the orchids only flourish when he plays mid-century big band music through a pair of rusted outdoor speakers. "The plants don’t care about the swing," Thorne said, wiping a droplet of condensation from his wire-rimmed glasses, "but it keeps me from rushing the pollination, and haste is the only thing that kills a ghost."

Lately, the rush has become external. A planned strip mall and residential complex is scheduled to break ground just three hundred yards from his property line next spring, a development that will likely alter the local microclimate and dry out his shade-house. Thorne has refused several offers from the developers to buy his half-acre lot, preferring to spend his savings on more misting valves and specialized moss imported from New Zealand. He knows the battle is ultimately a losing one, but there is a quiet, stubborn dignity in his refusal to move. He intends to see his current crop bloom one last time, even if it happens under the shadow of a new supermarket.