May 24 – “Dirt”

Question: When is dirt not dirt?  Answer: When you buy it in a bag. We went to WalMart today to get some dirt.  That's all we wanted, just dirt to level out some of the ruts in the backyard we caused by not actually planting the grass squares we bought.  I guess they are technically rectangles.  They seemed to be taking root, but they stuck up so much that it was hard to roll the wheelbarrow through that area.  So we just wanted to fill in the area around and in between the squares.  We went with the cheaper bag, four of them to get us started.  How can you mess up dirt?  Dirt's dirt, isn't it?    Apparently not.  We got what was labeled "topsoil."  That sounded like what we wanted.  Dirt to put on top of already existing soil.  Fine.  Why spend $1.98 per bag when you can get it for $1.38?  Oh, and we also got a monster-size bag of stuff that Chris wanted.  Potting soil.  Soil.  That's dirt, too, right?  They're sure proud of that kind of dirt, though.  Ten bucks for two cubic yards (whatever that means).   When we got home Chris started in on rearranging plants again, so I went to work spreading dirt.  The first bag did fine, but I noticed that there seemed to be a lot of wood chips.  The second and third bags were almost totally wood chips.  The fourth was more like the first.  The wood chips bags kind of frustrated me.  I guess they did their job.  It just didn't look right to me.   And we ran out of dirt before we got everything filled in.  And Chris filled up two or three big old pots, so we had to get another one of those mega-bags of her special dirt.  That meant another trip to  WalMart.  This time we selected the more expensive brand of topsoil dirt, and it looked like, well, dirt.  It spread much easier, and definitely looks more like what I expected … dirt.   Dirt.  Huh.  You get what you pay for.  Even with dirt.   1 Peter 4:7 says, "The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray."   Father, help me see more of what your mind is like.  It sure is hard to clear the junk out of mine.  Amen.