Monthly Archives: January 2009

I’d like to introduce you to one of my best blog buddies in the whole world, Brenda; otherwise affectionately known as The Dirt Lady.
You know how every once in a while when you’re hitting the “Next Blog” on the left side of the navigation bar and you just come across a blog that catches your fancy? That’s what happened to me. One day I was sitting there, clicking “Next Blog”, perusing the myriad of blogs that came up, leaving random comments in hope that that little bit of exposure might bring one or two more hits to my own blog, when all of a sudden, I see the world’s biggest header picture pop up with what looked like…well, I don’t really know what it looked like.The title, Dirt Travels, caught my attention and I started reading.
“How in the world could collecting dirt be so exciting to someone?” I asked myself as I investigated further on. This was a completely foreign concept to me, I just couldn’t grasp it. It’s just dirt, after all. How could something so mundane make someone so happy?
After leaving comments on several posts and following her blog for a while, I decided it was time to send in my own sample, so I went to Wal-Mart and bought a pack of little 2″x4″ plastic baggies. At the time, I was digging footings for the supports for my new shed and decided “Hey, tomorrow I’ll get a sample from the bottom of the next hole I dig and send it to that dirt lady!”
Well I did. When I got to the bottom of that hole, I used a spoon and scooped up two teaspoons, or somewhere around there because every chef knows that a tea spoon isn’t actually the same as a teaspoon, and put it in one of those little plastic bags. I thought she was crazy, much like the famed cat lady you always hear about.
I got to thinking about it though. As I sat in my office addressing the envelope, I began studying that little bag of Georgia Red Clay. “What walked the earth when this dirt was on top of the ground?” “How old was the earth?” “Hey, I’m the first human to ever see this little bit of dirt!” In that five minutes of reflection, it began to grow on me. I mailed it the very next day.
So far I’ve sent in two samples, the one from my own back yard, and another from Apache Junction, Arizona when I was out there visiting relatives last month. Suffice it to say, I’m hooked.
It’s not about the dirt, which I learned after sending my first sample. It’s about seeing the joy it brings a complete stranger, a stranger in the sense that we haven’t met in real life but have corresponded through our blogs, to receive something that someone out there took time out of their lives to make happen. When I send Brenda a sample, I know it brings her joy, and it brings me joy knowing that something I did, albeit a small thing, made someone’s day. It brings me joy to see the enthusiasm in her writing when she posts up an entry specifically about my sample.
She will receive another sample soon. I told her I wouldn’t reveal where this next one was coming from, but I will drop it in the mail on Monday. I’ve decided to keep the source a secret from her; it’s more fun to make her sweat it out!