Diary of a Plant Killer

I spend a lot of time apologizing to the plants. It's not that I'm negligent; it's just that there is so much on TV. Sometimes I forget to water a plant for, say, April, and then, to make amends, spray the others with a fire hose.

And the victims add up: creepers, climbers, berries, shrubs. I even killed a perennial (talk about false advertising). I'm not proud of this, Sierra Club. I suffer every time it happens. I even perform a service where I bury the plants in Glad trash bags, hoping the angels will take care of them ... with their tears.

It's a good thing we can't be tried for plant murder. I could just see the detective poking around in my garden: "Broken stems, dehydration, cigar butts in the soil ... Yeah, this is our guy."

When I was a child, my mom said that I had a green thumb. Unfortunately, she was talking about how I picked my nose. My actual relationship with plants was a little more clumsy.

In first grade I did show-and-tell on my uncle's "orgasmic garden." Mr. Pringer would have stopped me but for the resale value of the video. Later, in my teens, a supervisor grabbed my watering can and said, "Uh, Jason -- those plants aren't getting any faker."

Today my home is a Glad-Bag nightmare to plants from all stalks of life. Some have already passed on; others are counting the days. They sag when I enter the room, trying to catch my attention before "Family Guy."

You can almost hear the violets gossip at night: "Can you believe he left Sylvia for dead in the planter? Talk about bad feng shui. Hey, did you fart? It smells beautiful."

It is only for love of nature that I keep trying. I admire how plants grow through cracks in the sidewalk and how, like the common nose hair, they always stretch toward the light. It's almost like ... they're alive.

When I shop the K-Mart garden section, it is with a sense of possibility, as if I had never killed at all. I study the containers carefully and weigh all of my options before making a bad decision. Two months later, you can't tell the flowers from the weeds but for Gallagher's Theorem: "If you water it and it dies, it's a plant; if you don't water it and it grows, it's a weed."

For the record, Sierra Club, I've tried everything. I watered the plants with Dasani instead of tap. Dead. I sprinkled the soil with coffee grounds. Jittery, then dead. I even sang to the poor things. I think they died to shut me up. So it goes.

Maybe it's time to introduce plastic plants, which don't pester you with things like photosynthesis. I would, of course, need to find diseased plastic plants to mesh with the others. While we're at it, I may as well get stuffed animals to replace those needy living ones.

Or maybe, at the risk of serial murder, I will carry on. In fact, I promise to turn over a new leaf, buh dump bump. I will redouble my efforts to save this secret garden. Excuse me while I step out to K-Mart for some fresh seeds, a little pesticide, and just in case, a giant box of Glad Bags.