NightcrawlersNightcrawlers

Organism of the Organism of the

Year: EarthwormYear: Earthworm

Article Article

Wonderful Wonderful

Poems Poems

from your from your

editorseditors

Photo Photo

MontageMontage

Grow a Community Grow a Community

Poster INSIDE!Poster INSIDE!

History of History of

Arlington Arlington

GardensGardens

A Poppy A Poppy

Drawing!Drawing!

Grace M, Ashley, & Kara

Organism of the Year

Earthworm Soil is the start of the food chain. The plants

need soil to grow and strive in their environment.

The insects, mammals, or birds that eat the plants

also consume the nutrients that help us survive.

Soil provides food and ground for humans and ani-

mals. Plants strive on nutritious soil and soil pro-

vides oxygen for us to breathe and live. It also

gives homes to wildlife. Different environments

and soil are homes for a variety of animals.

Soil provides life for everybody, including

humans, microscopic organisms, and mammals.

The erosion of soil is a worldwide issue that only a

few countries aren’t dealing with. We, humans,

are contributing to soil erosion and soil is an im-

portant factor in life as it provides crops, oxygen,

and nutrients. Many animals will lose their homes

as well as their food source as topsoil disappears.

Many empires have fallen because of soil erosion

which shows that soil is essential to life. The

main causes of soil erosion are water and wind.

The best way to decrease soil erosion is to make

sure that farmers know about the issue. With the

ever-growing population, the future humans will

still need soil to live. Together, we must make a

difference and preserve our soil.

Earthworms are important in keeping our

soil healthy. Earthworms have no teeth, so they

burrow through the dirt and eat as they go

through. Whatever is inside the dirt, including mi-

croscopic organisms goes inside the earthworm.

Bacteria multiply inside the earthworm and the

earthworm’s casting add more bacteria to the soil,

which is good for the earth. Earthworms move soil

from lower layers up to the surface and move or-

ganic matter from the soil surface down to the bot-

tom. Where earthworms are active, the top 6 inch-

es of soil can be turned in ten to twenty years.

Arlington Gardens has been Pasadena’s only dedicated public

garden since it was established in 2003. The garden started out as a

vacant Caltrans lot that stood at the corner of Arlington Drive and Pas-

adena Avenue for 40 years, untouched. This site had started as a home

to only two mature oaks, a jacaranda, a California pepper, and five

different varieties of palms. Today it stands as a beautiful site that is

consistently being contributed to by the people of Pasadena.

In 2003, this lot had finally started to be discussed over. Coun-

cilmember Steve Madison asked the community, “What public devel-

opment should be provided in this three acre lot?” The conclusion was

that it should be passive with no playing fields, restrooms, or parking

lots. There were no ideas about what from the development should

take, until a woman named Betty McKenney stepped forward to sug-

gest a water-wise Mediterranean garden. The idea became a success.

The garden is now full of nearly 400 trees and many varieties of

plants that do well in any sort of weather condition. There are also

benches, tables and chairs with umbrellas, pots, and paths with a laby-

rinth between them. This labyrinth was added to the garden on Octo-

ber 8, 2010 with the help of the sophomores at Mayfield Senior School.

The type of labyrinth that was built is called a Classical 7 Circuit laby-

rinth. This labyrinth pattern is more than 5,000 years old and is the old-

est and most prevalent in the Labyrinth designs!

-Grace M

A Little History About

Arlington Gardens

This is a poppy. It is also know as the

California State flower.

-Ashley

The Garden

Kara

Above me, trees sway back and forth.

Beneath me, the ground feels rough and uneven.

Birds fly by me, chirping in my ear,

While beyond everything, cars go racing by.

The smells of various flowers overlap each other,

As well as the smells of the leaves and trees.

The petals between my fingers are soft and velvety.

To my right is an endless amount of plants, each

Completely different,

And rocks pile up on top of each other,

As if they are fighting over something.

In the corner of my eye, I see a ray of sunlight

Shining down on a certain flower.

I watch the single ray of light hit each petal slowly,

As I think about this whole new world

The Arlington Garden Poem

Ashley

With the sun beading down on my back,

Above head, at noon,

It warms the wooden benches.

Families sit on the wooden lawn chairs,

Enjoying the heat and the scenery surrounding them

Lots of green plants,

And shades of pink, orange, purple, blue, and yellow petals.

Flowers of all kinds.

Roses, daisies, poppies.

Round flowers, puffy flowers, flat flowers.

Flowers with 5 petals, flowers with 3.

The sweetness of the flowers is intoxicating

And sound of the birds singing tunes,

Is rich and soothing.

Hundreds of bees busy themselves,

Moving from flower to flower with a quiet buzz.

The cars along the street whiz by like racecars.

Settings of the Garden

Grace M

I look above to see palm trees, as if photo shopped around a

clear blue sky

I place myself at the beach with the sun’s rays dazzling on me

I return to the garden as I hear crickets scream across to each

other from different sides

I look to my right to see the ridge of the black archway that sur-

rounds me

It feels like hot silk

The palm tree in front of me had a series of ridges that wove on-

to the tree

They are sharp, easy for climbing

The lilly pad shape leafs that I pass are the red velvet ropes

That make me feel like a V.I.P

Surrounded by purple flowers, I am still in my celebrity moment

The fill the air with their perfume

When suddenly the organic matter smell strikes me

And I am reminded that I am down to Earth

My Message to Soil

Grace M

Do u ever think why me?

Why must I be here?

My mind troubles as does yours

For who you are is a sanctuary

You are a sanctuary

Providing us with ground to let our cold feet walk upon

To let new things sprout to surrender our hunger

To let things die for life

lives and deaths are among u

Would u consider yourself hell

Or Earth?

Although they can almost be considered the same

I stand among u as a person

As a person who has knowledge now

You are one big cycle of life and death

The people come as humans, and do their due as plants.

A New Type of Soil

Kara

Waves come crashing down in front of me

I feel the sun pounding my back.

I close my eyes as a splash of water hits my face.

Around me I hear everything.

Families laughing, enjoying their day,

Birds and their songs, flying overhead,

And in the distance, cars go racing by.

The smell of barbeques brings back memories,

As I watch sand fall through my fingers.

Out here it seems as if it’s a whole other world.

New animals, new faces, new plants.

The sand is the soil, along the shore, and

Plants learn to grow.

It’s a home for crabs, birds, and bugs,

And the ground is home to many others.

As I lay down under the bright, blinding sun,

I think about this whole new place,

A place full of life that is so different

Because of its unusual soil.

Dirt Demystified

Ashley

As rays warm the salty atmosphere around me,

Creatures roam this area,

Sand crabs. Bugs. Birds. Humans.

The blue rolling waves,

The endless water that won’t last forever.

Seagulls swoop in for a meal,

Breaking the consistent crash of the waves.

As I withdraw from my life and into another,

Warm sand slips through my toes.

The sand is soil.

A different type, but nonetheless soil.

It gives homes to sand crabs and small animals,

It provides food for underwater critters.

It grows plants for us to breathe.

It creates life.

Staring into the picture perfect moment,

I lose myself in another world,

Where I’m not visible to the bad moments in life.

Where I can be free at last,

Enjoying the Earth,

And what it brings to me.

Love. And most of all a chance at life.

The Editors

Letters from the Editor

This past week and a half has an eye opening experience for the class

to learn about soil and how it impacts the world. We really do not think

about this topic much, but when you really learn about it, it is quite mind-

blowing. On the very first day we had to start writing reflections every night

about this unit. One of my reflections the really shocked me was about the

quote “Muck is the mother of the meal bag.” In a way this is true, because

we need soil to grow fruits and vegetables, and eventually those fruits and

vegetables are put into the meal bag. These two have a connection like a

mother and child. I write about this quote, because it’s not something we

think about until we actually see the quote, or really go in depth about the

topic of dirt. It also struck my mind that Community Gardens can be used

so easily with any type of land. Community gardens are so underutilized,

when they are helping the planet and bringing a community together to

create a “no pesticides” garden. They also can be very beautiful like Arling-

ton gardens, which was made in 2003. It was such a peaceful place to sit

down and lie in the sun. These things can be started easily with the help from

a community. An example is the Pasadena Community Garden, which is a

work in progress and can always use contributing. All of these are examples

of community gardens that are really trying to make a difference in our lo-

cal area.

The Golden Ratio that we learned was one of the most fascinating

math problems I have ever seen and it is seen in different ways in communi-

ty gardens. With Fibonacci numbers, I never imagined you could do so

much. The numbers are in a pattern that fascinates me, by adding the first

number with the second creating the third number and so on. This pattern is

used with almost everything in nature and it seems impossible, but it actually

is true. They are used in everything from flower petals to apple cores to

branch growth.

Our soil unit rotation really gave us the chance to garden as a class and

contribute to our area, like in a community garden. I think it is great that we

are an herb garden by the commons. I didn’t know that you could really

grow anything in that area. Although it may not be the greatest tasting

plants ever, they will certainly be organic. As an addition we can now plant

strawberries and poppies at our homes, thanks to the pots and seed bombs

we received this afternoon. The rain gardens I think we can really get grow-

ing again and the vermicomposting system is a good edition to our campus.

New to my mind were all the tree types we learned about during the tree

walk, which makes our campus so beautiful.

-Grace M

Letter from the Editor

During the unit, we visited a few places. The first place was Arlington Gar-

dens. Arlington Gardens is Pasadena’s only committed public garden and lies

on three acres of land. There, we got to walk the labyrinth and get ideas for

our “One Wild and Precious Life” poems. We also gathered samples from vari-

ous parts of the garden so we could later look at the organisms living there. I

liked the visit to the garden a lot more than I had anticipated. Normally, a trip

to a garden wouldn’t excite me, but I was surprised after the trip.

We also got to visit a community garden in Pasadena. The particular gar-

den we visited was a developing one. It didn’t seem like a garden, but it will

soon enough. There, we learned about the different types of soil, sand, silt, and

clay and go to see the differences between composted soils and soil that

you’d find on the ground. Then, we got to help pull out weeds around the gar-

den and mix different soils together to fill up a planter.

On campus, we did many activities. We studied organisms from soil, air,

and plants. We learned about soil erosion and how that it is happening in

many countries across the world. We read a book about the Fibonacci se-

quence and saw how a lot of things in nature related to it. Towards the end of

the week, gardeners came to teach us. That day we got to garden, make a

compost bin, and learn about the trees at our school. We were all given our

own strawberry plant.

Throughout this week, we were divided into groups of three to make our

own magazines. These magazines included our “organism of the year” cover

story, each of our poems, propaganda poster, and each of our chosen pieces.

My group worked pretty well together. Because we were all friends, we were

able to get a lot done and still have fun and mess around.

-Kara

Letter from the Editor

Each day during the soil unit I learned something new. Whether it

was how to garden or that soil is vital to our food chain. Everyday, I

learned how soil impacted our lives and how we can help keep our soil

healthy. The soil that we need to provide us with food are exposed to

chemicals and plastic, from the trash that we produce. During, the soil unit

comparison of microorganism experiment was fascinating yet nasty at the

same time. While collecting samples from the Arlington Gardens, I

learned that microorganisms lived everywhere and anywhere. Leaves,

stems, trees, soil, and humans. I was surprised and fascinated. However,

after collecting the data after the samples sat for 5 days I was no longer

fascinated. I think the word disgusted was more like it. The different types

of organisms I saw on each sample made my group members and I ... let’s

say.. disgusted? We also decided that we would rather not take pictures of

the microorganisms that were growing on various sources. During our time

doing the soil unit we went on two amazing field trips. On the first trip to

the Arlington Gardens, we ate lunch among the beautiful flowers and na-

tive plants and also walked through the labyrinth. For our second adven-

ture we did more of hand-on activities. We pulled weeds, shoveled soil

and compost into a raised bed, and learned what soil is and how it helps

our planet. I experienced new activities each day and had fun while do-

ing it, during the soil unit.

-Ashley

Our days

during the

soil unit ;)