The Social Soil Let’s Dig In!

Exclusive Info on the

“Organism of the Year”

Sneak Peek at

Barbara Bacteria’s

New Album

See our 6 new

Poems of the

Week!!!!

Leaked Pictures of

the band “MMK” Gardening and

Helping the Earth

Special Edition:

Sally Sunflower’s Day

Spa &

Letters from the

Editors

History of Arlington

Gardens -Information you can’t

read anywhere else

Written by Kelsey

Before the Arlington Gardens

there were the most elegant houses,

known as “Pasadena’s Millionaires’

Row.” In April 1902, John Durand

bought the 10 acres of property that

was well known as the “Arlington

Heights.” On this land he built the Du-

rand home, the so-called biggest

home in Southern California. Land-

scape architects made a “tropical

paradise” in front of the house; the

paradise included palms, cacti, and

century plants such as roses and chry-

santhemums. This property belonged

to the family until 1960 when John M

Durand III passed away. All art pieces

and furniture were sold at a public

auction and the home was torn

down.

In 2003, Pasadena began to

think about how to use the property

that had been an empty space with

only a few trees. They decided that it

would not be meant for playing fields,

restrooms, or parking lots. Betty

McKenney developed the idea of a

climate garden. Everyone held onto

that idea, but no one started the pro-

ject. It was Betty and Kicker who used

their idea and were determined to

finish it.

While the idea was growing,

Cal Poly Pomona students drew up

plans for the gardens look, and Pasa-

dena, the Mckenneys and Pasadena

Water and Power worked together for

the idea to come alive. Both the Pas-

adena Beautiful Foundation and the

Mediterranean Garden Society

showed their support and neighbors

of the property donated fund, plants

and garden furniture. However, even

with all this going, many thought the

idea was only a vision.

With the help of Councilmem-

bers Steve Madison and Sid Tyler and

Mayor Bill Bogaard, all supporting the

idea, and the partnership with Pasa-

dena and Pasadena Water and Pow-

er, the idea moved further. The 3

acre space was covered with mulch,

a simple irrigation system was in-

stalled, and the garden was separat-

ed into sections to make level areas

to meet in. Finally in July 2005, reps

from Pasadena and Pasadena Water

and Power and neighbors, the first

plants and trees were planted in Ar-

lington Gardens. Since then practi-

cally 400 trees and a huge diversity of

plants that do well in our climates

have been planted in the gardens.

The garden, “Pasadena’s only dedi-

cated public garden,” changes

along the seasons. In the summer,

most of the plants take a break. In

the fall, the leaves from pomegran-

ate, sycamore, rape myrtle, Chinese

Pistache, and the cottonwood trees,

turn either red or yellow. In the winter

many colors disappear, though spring

rain brings color and life to the gar-

dens. Schools including our own

school have come to the gardens

and helped doing community service.

In 2010, Mayfield Senior School

helped make a seven circuit laby-

rinth. We use the garden as part of

our soil unit and the summer program.

Both Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts have

come and helped make the garden

flourish. Visitors are always allowed to

visit the garden anytime and any day

they would like. Arlington Gardens is

always open.

History of Arlington

Gardens

Organism of the Year:

The Earthworm

Kelsey , Makala , Maya

Thanks to soil, plants are able to grow and produce food. Soil itself is a household to many organisms. These organisms hold nutrients that plants need and helps make soil. Soil is also part of climate change, for its organic matter holds a large quantity of carbon. Humans depend on plants for wild flowers and forest. Soil helps trees grow, which pro-vides oxygen for us. We also de-pend on soil for farming and food production. However, as the world’s population has increased, soil has been used more to make food at a more rapid pace. With the help of fertilizer and improved mechanization, the new rapid production rate has been easier to handle. Still, in places with hardship and poverty, these ad-vanced techniques can’t be used or accessed. Some of the rea-sons poverty happens in dry, un-reliable climate conditions is be-cause the soil is unable to pro-duce enough food to feed the population. Soil is also the foun-dation to many of our buildings. Our cities are built on top of soil. For recreational sports, such as football or soccer, soil is im-portant for a quality foundation. With soil and good climate loca-tions, major forests of the world have grown and thrived; timber and fuel comes from these rain forests. Also, many plants and animals are able to thrive and live happily in these forests.

Top soil is a mixture of dead plants & animals and dead plants within the soil. There is al-so occasionally food from people composting. Top soil holds a lot of power over the nutrient cycle.

Plant remains are torn apart by animals and other organisms to form organic matter; the nutrients in the organic matter are taken by organisms and chemical happen-ings within the soil. After that, the nutrients are sucked in by the roots of the plants growing in the soil and the plants continues its

growth. Or-ganic matter happens at a reasona-ble rate where the nutrients cy-cle is unbro-ken. It is usually well-maintained as long as it has a natu-

ral conditions. However in the past 60 years, there has been a big decline in organic matter. In places where humans have got-ten in the way and interviewed, you need to modify the topsoil because the nutrient cycle is be-ing interrupted. Farmers have tried to maintain it, but many arms are unable to get farmyard manure. If you use farmyard ma-nure, it increases the organic matter. There are ways to make sure organic matter can be in-creased in soils. Organic soil is very fragile. It can shrink from the loss of water, and dry out on the surface since they are light. Soil erosion is washing away or blow-ing away the top part of the soil cover. However, it is a major con-cern all around the world. India and China are two countries that are losing soil 30 times faster than new soil is forming. We rely on soil for food and wildlife. With-out it, we could lose important components of our ecosystem, such as the two listed above. This year, the annelid is the Organism of the Year. You may have heard

or seen them before as they are known as the earthworm or night crawlers. The earthworm is re-sponsible for many things these help our soil stay healthy in order to grow healthy plants. There are about 2700 species of earth-worms around the world. Earth-worms have a soft brown, pink, or red body. They are covered with chemoreceptors, which are sense organs that find chemicals in the soil. These organs help earth-worms taste things.

Earthworms dig large bur-rows that allow water and air to get in the soil. When water and air are let into the soil, it helps stops erosion and brings water and air to the roots of plants. The burrows also make it easier for the plant roots to move around easier in the soil. The earthworms drag leaves and bits of plants into the soil. While they burrow, earth-worms swallow soil to eat the plant matter. Earthworms help turn the soil and bring organic matter down to mix with the soil. The swallowed soil then goes through it’s body and is left in piles on the top of the ground. This process is called castings. Casting is responsible for part of the soils structure. It is great ferti-lizer and people who farm worms collect the castings and sell it to gardeners.

As you can see, worms are a huge help to keeping soil healthy. They create their own fertilizer by just doing what they normally do. The earthworm con-tributes a lot to soil, as they change the structure of our envi-ronment. It’s contributions to the soil are the reasons why the earthworm is the Organism of the Year.

Written by Maya

Soil is made up of a lot of things

The list goes on just like a string

Rocks, humus, water, and air

They're all part of the soil cycle which I’m going to share

The first step starts with the Earth’s crust

Which can be broken down by a single gust

This process, does have name

Weathering or erosion, it’s all the same

When contact is made with the atmosphere

And things break down there’s no need to fear

This is called weathering and weathering is good

Because sometimes this step is misunderstood

Then there’s erosion which makes rocks move

It makes them shift and fall, don’t worry this is all approved

Thanks to weathering, and erosion

The rocks break down to pieces, like there was an explosion

Smaller plants can grow in these pieces of rock

Which slowly start to smell like a dirty sock

Over time the rocks start to break down

And humus takes away the soil’s frown

When the soil is more livable and organisms come

Organisms make the soil more fertile and less glum

This process can take up to more than 1,000 years

Which makes this message pretty clear

Soil helps us and this proves

There is no need for the Soil Cycle to be removed

At the Garden

I hear animal noises

They are different, yet

They mean the same

Calling to those near them

I see tall green figures

They surround me everywhere I turn

I watch families

Explore the garden

Admiring everything that is in their sight

Pink flowers, yellow bees, green plants

They appear everywhere I turn

I feel the breeze

Creating shadows

As it blows across the city

I smell a variety

Rosemary, mysterious stenches, nothing

I touch rocks

That have journeyed

Through many stages

To get to where they are

There, it’s an entirely different world

Our Beloved Soil

It scares me; the first thought comes to mind

I am sickened by what has become of us

I see our world in a different state

I see the destruction of our beloved soil

I see nothing but what we created

Why is it that what is beneath our feet

Be what we need most

We destroy

The key to our lives

And we just sit there

Watching us ruin our beloved soil

With applying cement on the top

How do we expect herbs, orchards, and us

To grow without nutrition

Our growing communities mean

Houses are built above our beloved soil

Every crumb is a privilege

Every seed is valued

We begin to stop caring

We begin to stop caring about our home

POEMS by

Barbaric Yawp

I’m inside, protected from the outside world

Outside my window, I see the bright foggy blue

sky

I see four different kinds of trees each with a differ-

ent history

I wonder how each one got here

There’s a tall tree floating in the wind right in front

of me

I don’t know what kind of tree it is

All I know is that it’s thriving

The soil underneath it must be healthy

I see a huge hill cover in shrubs and grass

A little house sits at the base of the hill

A farmer steps out of the house shovel in hand

He walks to a garden which is covered in beauti-

ful majestic flowers

He shovels all the flowers out and over time the

soil becomes unhealthy

Organism leave the soil and the nutrient cycle is

out of balance

There is vast open space at the base of a hill

The ground has not been watered or touched for

decades

The only plants in eyesight are desert bushes

Even the bushes are dying

The roots of the bushes are slowly breaking up the

hard soil

A slightly fertile land is untended

A woman lays compost all along the dirt

In one year the land is already swarming with mi-

croorganisms

The soil is thriving

I wonder if this tree or any tree lived in one of

these soil climates

I wonder if animals have come and gone be-

cause of how the soil changed

The soil always lives

As humans, animals, and plants come and go the

soil lives

Soil is filled with memories of our past and present

and soon to be future

How lucky the soil is!

Spring Day

Up, the cloudless blue sky is covered by a cloth

made of forest green cotton

In the distance, the dark grey paneling of an

old house

Listen closely, the sound of cars rushing down

the street

It steals the sweet escape of a serene and

peaceful jungle the garden gives

In my ear, I hear the sound of birds happily

chirping

A powerful scent fills the air as a delicate lav-

ender leaf skims my nose

Turn around; I notice the grand maple tree

providing shade for me

Look forward, the olive trees glisten and shine

dancing in the wind

A vine made of light purple wisteria arches

over a bench, spring

Some things seem as if they don’t belong, I

know they’re meant to be there

Everything has a purpose

POEMS by

Yawp

You and I are the same

The heat, wind, and rain

break us down to create

something new

We soak up sun every

day

Water nourishes us every-

day

Without water we would

dry out and be blown

away by the wind

People have misconcep-

tions about soil

People have misconcep-

tions about me

We help others thrive

Overtime we both

change into different

things

We both change to help

others and become

stronger to help the earth

LLLLLAR-

RRGGMMMMMMTTT!!!

POEMS by

Above me a luminous shape fills the never ending

blue sky filled with wisps of white cotton candy

clouds

Above I hear wing rushing through big tree

branches

In the distance if I look closely I see a tiny red and

white creature pecking its way through thick tree

bark

The strong scent of sweet lavender fills my nose as

the wind sweeps it around me

Ever so often does the aroma of soil and lavender

mix and make a fragrance that tickles my senses

After a short time the smell of fresh cut grass over-

whelms both whiffs and it makes me wrinkle my

nose

I feel something that is soft like the inside of freshly

cooked baguette

It smell reminds me of an exotic island filled with

many bizarre birds and colorful flowers

When I open my eyes. All it is, is an orange flower

petal

Right of me I see a girl my age

As she gracefully looks back and forth from writing

and taking in her surroundings

Her curious eyes darting all around the garden

Her face serious but I still see that she is happy

Together we are looking around and quickly look-

ing down to our notebook to record what we see

there.

Vivid pink and blue flowers are sprouting every-

where around my feet

These flowers, giving me a new perspective on

how vivid life is and how vivid nature is to

MMK recently visited different gardens in Pasadena! They visited Arlington Gardens, a local

garden near Huntington Hospital, and Westridge School during their trip. Pictures were

leaked of the band planting flowers and working with worms during their visit. They matched

in Ollie Organism’s new line of khaki skirts and sweatshirts for their first day and continued to

match the next day with Sabrina Soil yoga pants and Frances Fungi shoes.

Letter From Editor

Dear Readers,

The Soil Unit was a great experience and I had a fun time. For the past 7 days, I have learned

about soil in different ways. From field trips to classes, we learned all things soil, all which we used to

create our soil magazines.

In the first week of the unit, we visited the Arlington Gardens. The Arlington Gardens is

“Pasadena’s only committed Garden”. Many schools including ours have helped take care of the gar-

den. There I found inspiration for my “One Wild and Precious Life” poem, learned about the labyrinth,

and gathered soil samples to later compare microorganisms. It was there where I learned how to ap-

preciate nature. I’ve never thought nature was important, but after sitting down and observing what

surrounds me, I realized how nice it is to have wildlife in our environment.

We also visited the Pasadena Community Garden, where we helped pull out the weeds and mix

soil with manure. I learned about the kinds of soil there are: sand, silt, and clay. We were shown regular

soil and composted soil. I was very surprised how different they look from each other. The composted

soil looked somewhat “cleaner” than the regular soil. We did projects on campus as well. Gardeners

came to Westridge and assisted us in planting our addition to the rain garden and herb garden, build a

worm bin, study the trees on campus, and make our own seed bombs and strawberry plants to take

home for our own gardens. It was a day that I will never forget.

Ms. Lukens taught us the Fibonacci sequence. The Fibonacci sequence is a sequence of num-

bers with each number the quantity of the two numbers before. Ms. Lukens gave us a rabbit problem

for us to solve; we had to find the sequence, which is the Fibonacci sequence. It was challenging since

I thought of many ideas, but they never worked. Finally, after many tries, I was able to figure it out. I

am proud of that because I was able to figure it out myself. After learning the Fibonacci sequence, we

took pictures of the sequence in nature. I was surprised by how many things have the numbers in the

sequence!

The 7th grade was split into groups of 3 and each group was to create their own soil magazine.

We used these experiences to create our magazines, spending multiple blocks only focusing on them.

There have been many instances were it was hard to work in groups because people sometimes don’t

focus, dilly-dally, or don’t even work and have the rest of the group do it. However my group, Maya,

Makala, and myself worked extremely well together. We stayed focused the entire time, never argued,

and even finished half of the magazine in just one day! When writing the organism of the year paper

was much simpler than we imagined, only because we all answered the homework questions well. By

just adding all our effort and work together, we became closer and closer to finishing every minute.

There were a few challenges throughout the unit. First of all, all of our field trips were outdoors

and in the middle of the day. It was very hot outside and many of us ran out of water before we were

finished. There were also many, many bugs flying around us. Every Time we pulled out a weed a bug

would fly out. One tree at the Arlington Gardens held a beehive and there were a numerous amount

of bees flying around next to the labyrinth. The last challenge was having to work where people were

running around. Many girls were chasing each other while we worked on our magazines. That made it

challenging to stay focused, but we were able to ignore most of it.

I am very proud of what I accomplished and what my group accomplished. I myself get distract-

ed very easily. I loose focus all the time and that does not help with finishing within a certain time. Sur-

prisingly I was able to do just the opposite this time, barely loosing focus when working in our groups. I

was also able to make an entirely waste free lunch, twice! I packed and used everything that was re-

usable and never had to throw anything away. I find that very impressive considering that I rarely bring

my own lunch to school. Like I had said before, I am proud of my group for how much of our magazine

we were able to complete. We all succeeded in finishing our parts of the project by the due dates we

created. The three of us worked extraordinarily well together and since we are all great friends, we

had fun through it all.

— Kelsey

Letter to the Editor Dear Readers,

Lately I’ve been part of an interesting unit having to do with this magazine. It’s called the

Soil Unit. Prior to the Soil Unit, I was also part of something called the Water Unit which was inter-

esting as well. During the Soil Unit, I’ve got to know soil in all different kinds of ways. I visited soil

from a math, English, science, and history perspective. I never knew you could incorporate soil

and teach it through so many subjects.

For the English part of this unit, we did wrote poems and read stories. For the first poem we

had to write, we visited a community garden in Pasadena. This garden is filled with plants that

can live in hot weather and waterless situations. Because this is a community garden, it can’t al-

ways be tended to and watered. As we walked around this beautiful garden, we were asked to

notice the things around us. We looked up, in the distance, and right in front of us. We were also

asked to hear and smell the things around us. Once we gathered all this information, we wrote

a poem about it. Another thing that helped us write the poem was reading other similar poems.

We read The Summer Day by Mary Oliver and Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in

Pine Island, Minnesota by James Wright.

We also did another poem, the “One Wild and Precious Life” poem. The assignment was

to make a poem that could possibly take someone's breath away. This turned out to be a lot

harder and a lot more confusing than expected. For our inspiration we read a story called

Clyde’s Pickup. This story was about a man who was away from his car for so long that soil

formed and plants blossomed. We also read a story called Saint Phocas as Fertilizer. This story

was about a man who used his body to make the soil more fertile. I noticed that in both these

stories, there’s some type of sacrifice which really made me think what my poem should be

about.

For history, we learned about a labyrinth in Arlington Gardens. This kind of labyrinth is a lot

different from what I thought it would be. Apparently when you’re walking to the center you

think about stressful things, on the way back, you release those things. It’s supposed to be a

form of meditation. My classmates and I did this and it was a really cool experience.

For math, we did a cool exercise called the Golden Ratio. It showed how math is s woven

in with nature all around you. Also, we learned about something called the Fibonacci se-

quence. My classmates and I went outside and searched for things in the natural world that

had one of the Fibonacci numbers. It was incredible how many things did. From the petals of a

flower to the number of leaves on a branch, they showed up everywhere.

For science, we did a really cool lab at Arlington Gardens. We took samples of soil, petals,

and even spit and put them in petri dishes. After about 5 days we opened them again. It was

really interesting to see all the organism that had grown in these petri dishes in only 5 days. There

were some downsides though. When some natural things sit for a while untended too, they can

get moldy. Mold is an organism though, so its appearance was expected. What wasn’t ex-

pected was how much the mold and other organisms were going to smell. After studying each

dish we cataloged our information in our packets.

Speaking of cataloged, another thing we’ve been doing is working on soil magazines.

And if you haven’t figured it out yet, this is the soil magazine I’m talking about! The other editors

(my classmates) in my group, have been really awesome to work with and I think we’ve made

an AMAZING magazine and I hope you do too! Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

Maya

Letter From the Editor

Dear Reader,

This week has been crazy! My fellow editors and I

have learned a lot about soil, and how it helps the

earth. I learned a lot about myself while taking field trips

Descanso gardens, Pasadena community garden and

Arlington garden. At the beginning I had a hard time

getting into it because of the bugs but when we got in-

to it I started to warm up to the nature as we did many

rotations at Westridge doing tree walks, planting straw-

berries, and tending to the rain gardens at school. While

I conquered some of my fears I had to face my fear of

spiders, worms and other creatures that make their

home tin gardens. In finish I had a great time learning to

breaking through my comfort zone while learning about

the thing that helps nourish our world, soil.

-Makala