'The orchids flowered when I wasn’t looking.
'They were my grandfather-in-law’s, grown in a plastic pot in a corner of his garden up in the cold hills, where glossy rhododendrons sat studded with blooms like cloves on a baked apple, where the bay was a blue smudge far off in the landscape, and the old steam train ran once a Sunday along the tracks over the back fence, blowing wood-smoke and the cries of children into the yard.'
Source: Opening paragraph.