Everything's Gone Green....

Moist…Warm…Sticky…Moldy.

Huh?

Had you there for a second, didn’t I?

To say that the weather conditions here in sub-rural South Carolina are often wettish is putting it mildly. The humidity is legendary, especially in the summer months. And what likes to manifest itself in warm, wet environments? Mildew and mold, of course.

And it simply flabbergasts me how many times a day I pass by homes growing green with a delicious humidity-induced salad up the exterior walls.

Now, I’m a homeowner, so I can say I more or less stand in similar shoes as the people I’m calling out here. I assure you, nothing is growing on the sides of my home. In fact, damn near nothing is growing at my house except crabgrass and a small patch of greenery over my septic field. But you lazy slack-asses who come home day after day to a moldy-assed domicile? You should be kicked in the nutsack.

I’m not talking about single-wide trailers here, either, although I pass several in my usual travels that look like camouflaged pillboxes in a triple-canopy Vietnamese jungle. No, I’m also talking about 2-and 3-level houses as well. There’s a home in my mom’s neighborhood in a really nice North Charleston subdivision that is probably about a $250,000.00 home, and it’s got salad everywhere. And it’s had that salad on the exterior walls for at least 2-3 years now. Of course, they also have a non-running Jaguar convertible covered in grime dry-rotting in place in the driveway, too.

I pass a house almost every day on the Edisto River, an absolutely gorgeous home that’s gotta be a $350K to $400K crib, and it’s green all up the front. Sure, it’s along a swampy-assed river, constantly exposed to spores of various fungi, but I feel that if you care enough to own an ostentatious abode in a conspicuous locale, then at least maintain it. The second house at least has the excuse of living far away enough from town on private acreage to not catch hassle from the neighbors over it, but I’m amazed that the first house mentioned has managed to get away with it for so long without catching shit for it from the Yard Nazis of the homeowner’s association.

Speaking of Yard Nazis, please don’t lump me in with that crowd. The typical Yard Nazi in my experience is some nosey old bag of a bitty who cruises the development at 5 mph in her 83 Buick reporting on the activities of her neighbors when the grass gets too long or they leave the garage door open all day. The Grass Gestapo wants “alles in ordnung” in the Stepford Cookie Cutter Communities. They dime you out to the HOA, who in turn dictates to you that you can’t park your boat in front of your house for more than 15 minutes, or you can’t have more than 2 carloads of visitors at a time parked on the street. The price you pay to live in a hastily-built identical cracker box 8 feet from your neighbors.

I’m just saying that you really should have enough pride in your environs to at least keep it from looking like a loaf of bread left in the sunshine for a week. Are you lazy, or just a pig? If you can’t afford to get it pressure-washed professionally, then at least get thee to Home Depot for some de-molding solution. Hose it down and use a street broom to scrub it off. A home with ivy-covered walls looks quaint. A home with mold-covered walls looks like a block of old cheese.

Of course, by now you must think I live in the Taj Mahal, right? Nope. I have a small, modest home, nothing ostentatious or grandiose. However, the grass is cut, there’s no mold on the walls, and no collections of deceased automobiles, piles of beer cans, piles of debris waiting to be burned, or half-destroyed trampolines. I do have a couple of ratty lawn chairs behind my trees that need to be offloaded in the spring but I assure you, no crops are growing on my home.

If you let the outside of your house look like something that was found in the back of the fridge wrapped in a foil cocoon and approaching sentient status, then I shudder to think of what the inside looks like. Enough dirt on the outside of your home to allow spores to attach and grow. Fungus, dude. You get fungus on your toes, you treat it, right? Same with ball fungus. You don’t just let those fungal infections fester, do you? You see mildew in the tub, you scrub it I hope. You don’t let your shower become a Third World rainforest do you?