Melissa’s profile on Blogger has been viewed almost 10,000 times since she joined in October 2004. That’s because her blogs tell stories about gardening, fabric dyeing and how to make garden art from junk. She blogs about the birds and the bees, and about motherhood and vegan food, and she has an empire of dirt from which all this goodness grows.
Empress of Dirt is a personal garden and nature site, with some life philosophy and humour thrown in. Melissa is the first to admit that she has little gardening or nature expertise, but she loves the outdoors and paying attention to how it thrives. And, she explains, “if you put a bunch of plants in the ground, they eventually get huge and fantastic looking.” And her blog nourishes that truth.
Back in 1999, Melissa had an online business selling hand-dyed fabrics, and it was through her monthly newsletters that she started sharing funny anecdotes from her home life. The response from readers was so favourable that she turned the stories into a daily blog entitled Pioneer Woman With Cell Phone. The blog revolved around motherhood and the antics of her family members.
For a few years, the blog was a fun place to write for Melissa. But eventually her oldest daughter became self-conscious about being included in her mom’s posts, and asked to be kept out of it. “Gasp! That was the end of my best material! I continued blogging but it seemed muted to leave her out, but I had to respect her wishes…” And so, she shifted her blogging efforts to a new site, and Empress of Dirt was born.
Empress of Dirt is the site on which Melissa spends the majority of her time, but there is another place on Melissa’s personal blog roll. Fabric Dyeing 101 is where Melissa compiles all her notes and knowledge and experience in the fabric dyeing business. In conjunction with this blog, she’s also writing an e-book.*
Blogging comes natural for Melissa; she’s a compulsive photographer and loves to write. Her pictures are beautiful before Photoshop, and impress folks interested in gardening, flowers or rare butterflies. In a recent post named brown bees, Melissa posts images of honey bees collecting pollen. The pictures are filled with wildflowers and green leafy plants and natural medicine helpful herbs. Even in her more humorous posts, such as guess who caused $279 damage?, her snapshots show the beauty of nature at a close range. She truly has a great eye for capturing the essence of her subjects, like this mischievous chipmunk.
When asked what she hopes her readers take away from Empress of Dirt, Melissa answers, “Inspiration and often a laugh or two. I have complete aw and reverence for the earth and nature, but I also have a rather ridiculous sense of humour and I don’t mind sharing it, no matter how embarrassing it can be. Laugh with me or at me, I don’t care. Just laugh.”
Over the past eight years, Raymi has become a Canadian web celebrity. Thousands of readers have watched her grow up on the internet and most have followed her work from the moment they discovered her domain. Here archives are indeed expansive. She would need 
Like every artist’s first work, Raymi’s early material seems unrefined by comparison. Backin 2000 she often experimented by altering text sizes and fonts to deliberately defy standard formats. Personally I’m thrilled she outgrew the baby talk slang, and a particularly annoying habit of spelling ‘with’ as ‘wif’. Her evolution is still in progress and now an even more prolific pen has turned to writing novels. Raymi has inventory for sale on her website, and memories enough to fill storage units full to the brim with laughter. Here’s a link to buy 
Not seeking self annihilation, she spends her days making art and taking beautiful photos to add to the twenty thousand images already stored in her 
Sadly, by the time Kristen finally got up to speed and truly personalized her domain, and before she ever made a dime, the initial job offer fell through, and the company that seduced her into the blogosphere was no longer in business. Other companies and media buyers contacted her but unfortunately they wanted to compromise truth, and censor her language. Since her readership had begun to grow, Kristen declined. “There was no way that I was going to endorse products I’d never used, or tone down the sarcasm. I didn’t want my personal blog to sound like anyone else.” She relates. Yet in many ways, Shambled Ramblings has a lot to do with Kristen searching for, and finding different identities.
Kristen is a cool chick that likes to party on occasion. It’s a fact she knows the lyrics to hundreds of obscure early 1980’s heavy metal songs. She likes live music, and plays a mean game of pool. Her posts are personal and range from 
Muskoka Outdoors
Bill embraces blogging because it gives him the ability to recount his stories. Though he humbly insists he’s not a good writer, his writing is fine, and 
Samantha is a 27 year old married mother-of-two that works in the construction industry. During the day she (sometimes) wears a hard hat, coveralls and steel toed boots on downtown Toronto construction sites. But at home, in the evenings, she gently constructs beautiful social nets – she blogs and builds pretty web buttons that bind together a potent roster of rookie moms.
Sam is ahead of the curve in social networking, and her techniques are worth studying - her Tempting Mama Twitter account now has 380 followers, due in part to the brilliant avatar. One thing I noticed right away is how her blog incorporates lots of popular social networking buttons. Her Stumble Page is focused on motherhood, but assembled from lots of diverse source material.
Okay now the real reason why I love Samantha – she puts it on the line. She is genuine and open and writes from the heart. I remember reading the post she wrote back in January under her blog’s Marriage tag where she opened up about her own marital problems. I marveled at the honesty and the bravery of her self documentation – she had the courage to step out from behind the façade and face reality in confessional writing that becomes the ultimate public self exploration. The next day she started dismantling the facade and her readership helped.
Micaela just entered teachers college at the University of Windsor.
Michael Cayley is a web entrepreneur that studies culture and communication and prognosticates on the future of social networks. Those of us who read the scraps of wisdom he leaves lying around in his posts hope to profit by actualizing his ideas.
Michael Cayley met Rob Campbell (that’s me) on Sept 4th 2008 at Timothys coffee shop in the Carrot Common on Danforth Avenue in Toronto. We spoke for two hours. After the meeting I walked away with a profound new understanding of social media, and a bold new vision of the charitable future of Canada Blog Friends.
Michael announced the publication of his SCVA work in a quirky piece of writing entitled 
Ted understands that he’s playing a role as 
Here it is, a 1950 AEC Regent III double-decker bus in a 1999 photograph. Complete with London Transport fleet names and lots of other cool authenticities, the vehicle looks to be in reasonable condition - only the radiator and most of the engine cooling system is missing. The story goes that this vehicle was imported into the United States from England and came to be owned by two women from Oregon. It was sold in Santa Rosa California when it broke down on the highway and was deemed too expensive to repair. Now if it could be properly fixed and completely refurbished, it would certainly be a novelty on the streets of Toronto. Mathew was consumed checking 
In keeping with the same spiritual idea of raising the dead, this blogger is also active in the 
Keely Valentine must type as fast as she thinks, for her writing seems as natural as a seventeen year old girl talks. Each post flows together into a wonderfully feminine, refreshingly amateur blog spectacle. This girl is supremely confident and that’s manifest in her devil-may-care writing. Its all attitude and Keely’s got it, and she ‘brings it’ with good information rich posts. It really doesn’t matter that her prose is littered with typographical errors, and run on sentences, because that somehow adds to her juvenile authenticity and the presentation of her unique content.
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