Clearly, the way to seriously sell your house in a slumping market, get it all the attention it derserves involves also making your Estate Agnet uncomfortable, and afraid that she’s pissed you off.

Which, evidently, is right where you want them.

I did an Open House, and heard all about mulching the flower beds, and cleaning out the garage. My fatal error it would appear, lies in assuming, incorrectly, that she was referring to the back yard plantings, not the front ones. The ones, oddly enough, that are burried under four inches of prime, moisture trapping black bark mulch.

For all you trendy wicked together plant people out there, you automatically see dollar signs falling for every inch they lay down. This stuff is not for the faint of wallet. However, it’s bug-nesting resitant qualities, along with its superior moisture-trapping-ness, is nothing to sneeze at. I put it in, so that creepy crawlies didn’t nest in the mahogany wood that is my deck, having been lured there by the odoiferous, ugly red bark mulch that every cheap schmuck around has. The kind that attract flies, bees, ants, especially the big hungry carpenter kind, and, don’t hold as much water as I do with PMS.

That said, pehaps you can imagine my surprise (read: outrage) and general displeasure (I was IRATE) with the commentary on more than three occassions about the mulch. Which is when I let her have it, with both wheel-barrels.

I started off nicely - my beautiful home, with it’s gorgeously finished basement (relax, there is a point to bringing that up) is located atop an old gravel pit. Thus, I’ve lovely drainage, and, should the monsoon weather patterns from India develop over here, my basement shall remain dry, and lovely, while the storms are a-ragin outside.

However. Having pointed out that lovely attribute, it is hell to keep enough moisture up to grow anything other than tumbleweeds and crabgrass. So. Instead of contractor grade cheap shit, I went whole hog, and put in the expensive, I’ll save the planet with my absorbant mulch route. My house doesn’t smell of rotting cedar, and while a vole made it’s home beneath the front porch, I think that was due more to shade, and the attraction of ugly mulch.

I dropped 5K in mulch alone.

FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS of mulc is something that this other Agent who is looking at buying this house is calling dirt.

Pointing this out, I got a litte hot under the collar, and now my agent is terrified I’ll drop her, and find someone else, as she offended me about my “exterior planting choices” and she’s eager to make it up to me.

She’s already lined up someone else to look at the house.

At this rate, I’m starting to wonder what else I can be really pissed about when she’s showing the house. Maybe, she’ll get it sold so she doesn’t have to deal with me, and my attitude anymore.