My hanging petunia plant is dying.

I didn't even know it was sick. I've been watering the thing every day, well, at least every other day during the recent monsoons, but its leaves are shriveling up and the blooms have all fallen off. I reluctantly said my good-byes and placed it in an area of my back yard I've dubbed Potters Field, alongside three of last year's ferns and the remains of what was once a brilliant hot pink rose bush.

The truth is, I just do not have a green thumb.

I've tried to tell my cousin that time and again but she refuses to give up on me.

"Look, if you just water the thing and cut off the blooms when they are dead, you can't stop it from growing!"

Wanna bet? I once killed a silk poinsettia without ever touching it. I walked into the den one day and the scarlet red blooms were scattered all over the floor by the pot. Maybe it was the heat from the gas logs. But it bit the dust just the same, it really did.

It's now May and my cousin still has a live poinsettia from last Christmas and it's blooming all over the place.

I have a corn plant that has sat in the corner of my den for 10 years. In all that time, it has not grown one inch. It doesn't die; it just doesn't grow. It's like it's in plant purgatory. I water it once a week, talk to it nicely, and rotate the pot to give equal light to all sides. Still, it just sits there, mocking me.

The irony is, I love pretty plants and colorful flowers. I'd give anything to be able to grow them. I can't tell you the amount of money I've spent on gorgeous plants over the years only to have them croak on me after I've had them 24 hours.

I use fertilizer. Doesn't matter. I put a few where they'll get the morning sun and some I place in the shade, according to the little tag attached, careful to follow the directions explicitly. Doesn't matter. If it is around me any length of time, that sucker's a goner.

I've always loved gardenias and the way they smell. When we lived in Valdosta hubby planted me four bushes and they were absolutely beautiful. The blooms were huge and pungent and came back every year we were there.

When my dear daddy died someone sent a beautiful gardenia bush to his funeral. As the plants were being divided among my mother, sister, and me I kept eyeing that gardenia bush. "You don't need that," my husband said. "I could plant it for you, but you'd end up killing it."

I was determined to prove him wrong so he did indeed dig the hole for me, tenderly placed the plant in the ground and packed fresh potting soil all around it. I watered it lovingly and silently said a prayer over it.

For a couple of months, nothing. Then one day I came home from work, and there were the most beautiful white blooms all over that bush. I had broken the curse. Or so I thought.

I nursed that plant like a baby for weeks, made sure it had plenty of water and fertilizer, and I actually think it grew a couple of inches taller.

As the weather warmed, however, my special gardenia bush began to look a little droopy and its leaves turned a funny shade of yellow. I checked the bush for some sort of parasite and found none but dusted it just to be safe.

Daddy died February 22, 1999. The gardenia died April 12. I was distraught.

About three months later I was due to have some surgery and, as patients often do, I received some spectacular flower arrangements and one extremely rare lilac orchid from my close friend who lives in Macon. The orchid was in full bloom and was in perfect health. The plant even came with a special handbook with instructions on how to tend this most rare of flowers.

By the time I had finished the first chapter, the orchid had drooped its head, lost its leaves and given up the ghost. I couldn't believe it. I was beginning to become paranoid now. Some deranged gardener from the netherworld was out to get me.

My green-thumbed cousin to the rescue! She took the ailing orchid home with her, I suppose so it could join all the other fat and friendly fauna at her house and get a new lease on life. The last I heard it had produced its second bloom, stately and tall. I felt betrayed, and silently wished it an invasion of aphids.

I thought smaller and purchased a dainty African violet that I could sit on my windowsill. It took one look at me and started wheezing.

"African violets need water," said my cousin, "but from the bottom or the leaves will rot. They need plant food, but it has to be a special kind. They need humidity."

"They need you," I told her.

"I can't keep taking your plants, Mickie," she groaned, as I tried to pawn off a hand-me-down John Cabot Rose. "You can do this, I know you can," she insisted. She tried once more to teach me the fine points of pruning. I was bored silly, stuck my tongue out at the spindly rose bush, and promptly stepped, barefooted, on one of its lopped off limbs, thorns and all. It now resides at my cousin's house. I don't know its condition now and I really don't care.

I planted peonies last month and they began sprouting last weekend. Today the neighbor's dog christened them several times until I was able to chase him away. Now I suppose I can call my little sprouts "peedlings."

My sister is another one who has dirt in her veins. She can grow anything. A perfect day for her would be digging in her shrubbery to find a good spot for yet another blooming plant. She has vines of every kind cascading down her porch columns and colorful flowers pop up all over the yard.

I don't have any idea from whom she gets her green thumb. It certainly isn't my mother, whose thumb is as brown as mine. Bless her heart, Mama has tried so hard to maintain plants given to her as gifts but if I'm there when they arrive I go ahead and give them the last rites. It's the least I can do. I certainly have no advice for her on keeping them alive.

My birthday is in August and I have asked for a landscaper to groom my yard and remove all the dandelions and any green thing in my shrubbery that I didn't spend good money on.

"I can do that for you," my hubby said.

"Yeah," I told him. "Like you've done for the last twenty years, right?" When we lived in subdivisions our yard was always the prettiest on the block. Hubby had it looking like Eden itself. When we moved to the country he put away the edger and the shovel and proclaimed, "Nature will take its course now. I'm done with lawns and lawn maintenance."

I wouldn't have had shrubbery at all if my sons hadn't told him it was a disgrace that our house looked "naked" compared to every other house we'd ever owned.

Remember the old proverb, "The garden in your mind will never be the one that grows in your yard?"

That's true. Wish all I will, I'll never have a lovely flower garden.

Well, at least not until I'm pushing up my own daisies.