Four ferns hang from metal hooks on our back porch.

"Are they real?" a friend asked recently.

I had to confess that they were artificial ferns. Plastic is an amazing substance.

But I was thrilled that my friend had to ask the question to be sure.

My wife, Joni, and I don't have a green thumb between us.

We either water plants too much or not enough. Either way, they die.

But we love the appearance of healthy plants. So we rely on fake plants to give our home just the right amount of plant life.

But we also have a real plant out on our porch. It's a spider plant that we won at a raffle at a local banquet recently.

It would have been rude not to take the plant home.

It currently has a prominent place on our porch.

Luckily, it's still alive. I've watered it a few times, and so far it seems to be thriving. I'm amazed.

My mother-in-law says spider plants are hard to kill. That's good because only a hardy plant can survive our black thumbs.

I'm not sure how I became so toxic to plants. My mother and father always managed to keep plants alive in their house in St. Louis County.

But that skill somehow eluded me.

I feel bad about it. I never set out to be a plant executioner. No doubt, I would be banned from the Sierra Club.

I love ferns. I have some growing in the yard. But they survive because Mother Nature nurtures them better than I do.

I've been known to occasionally water them with the hose, but only if we are in the middle of a massive drought.

One of my friends recently garnered the Cape Girardeau chamber's landscape award. His yard looks great.

My yard has plenty of trees, but the shade makes growing grass nearly impossible.

Any self-respecting lawn would be appalled at our yard.

I've told Joni that my ultimate goal is to install artificial turf. Then I could have a nice green lawn and never have to fertilize or even cut it.

I'm sure it's only a matter of time until artificial turf becomes common in residential neighborhoods across America.

We've perfected fake plants so there's no reason we can't do the same with fake lawns.

Of course, that might create an economic downturn for lawn and landscape companies. But with a little retraining, we could teach people in those industries how to install and maintain fake shrubbery.

The great thing about a fake plant is that you can still care for it. The other day I sprayed the leaves on my porch ferns just so they would have a healthy appearance.

I'm proud of those ferns. They know how to hang around.

Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.