soil kelsey, makala, maya
DESCRIPTION
Soil Magazine 2013TRANSCRIPT
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