In a densely populated town, a woman lived who was known for the iridescent flora surrounding her little brick house.  Maintaining the flora required herculean love, patience, and time, which explained why all the other buildings in her town received only the humble company of ragged weed clumps.

In time, the town experienced an economic downturn.  Shops closed, companies ran out of money, and people left.  The once-bustling river of people turned into a lethargic lake of silence.  Not much money could be spared to keep the place presentable; debris cluttered the streets, nobody mowed the public lawns, weeds replaced the grass, and graffiti inched its scandalous hands up the saturnine bricks. All the streets, all the lawns, all the grass, and all the bricks turned gray except for those that surrounded the house with the iridescent flora.

The house with the iridescent flora became an Elysian haven for both hungry stomachs and hungry eyes.  To the hungry eyes, the myriad varieties of blooms, fruits, and saplings gave off an auroral glow that acted as an aegis against the thick smoky surroundings.  To the hungry stomachs, the flora produced a perfume that wafted into souls, and those who followed the scent received the reward of fruit nectar and jovial conversations with similarly lured people.  However, the woman could not sustain charity forever, and out of desperation, she began to sell her flora to survive.  The people of the town clung greedily to the blooms that disappeared for decoration, fruits yanked for hunger, and saplings uprooted for medicinal treatments.  All of the money the woman was paid guaranteed only the essentials for her survival; the flora thrived no more, the lawn struggled to remain weed-free, and the graffiti began to occupy the walls that cucumbers once climbed.  Soon, the woman ran out of products to sell, and leaving the town became her only means of survival.  She turned off the lights in the house one last time, locked the door, and watched the only town she ever knew shrink in the side mirror as she drove away.

In a densely populated town, a woman lived who was known for the iridescent flora surrounding her little brick house.  Now, all that is left is a dusty abandoned town of ghost houses, suspended in the gooey liquid of buzzing silence.