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Jenna is a rising 9th grader with a specialized track for Medical Services.  Jenna hopes to study medicine and become a neurologist. In her spare time she enjoys volleyball, travel, photography and hanging out with her friends.

“Look, here’s Fezzika,” my mother said, bending down to point out the Woodhouse toad tucked under the garden stone. We had discovered the amphibian’s house a few days earlier, and I was fascinated by the placement choice. She had dug into the soil under a cornerstone edging the flowerbed beside the main path through the garden. The stone is flat, shaped a little like a boomerang, wide and bent in the middle, providing a convenient entrance and shelter.

The first one or two years we lived here we simply dug plots of soil to plant our garden in and sometimes hired someone to till up an area we chose. But the second time we tilled, my mother discovered two toads that the tiller blades killed. One had missing limbs and made it as far as the surface of the tilled soil before dying. It was heartbreaking that these benign creatures had been injured in our yard where we tried to protect and encourage toads and other creatures.

My mother decided to try things a different way. We went up to a nearby gravel pit and gathered rocks from there, transporting them to our yard. Using these stones we built raised beds to plant our garden in, making an almost-grid around the new flowerbed and then shoveling soil into the beds, mixing manure and compost in as well. With this new approach to the garden, we had no need to till the plot.

Soon after that, toads readily swarmed to the garden, coming out of secret holes at night and hopping through water puddles that the sprinkler left. They squatted in the plastic container of water my mother placed at the south end of the garden, a little “toad spa”. Some nights, there would be two or three toads soaking in the water at a time. When any of the family walked through the garden at night, we had to be careful that we didn’t step on a toad sitting in the path. Oftentimes I went barefoot, partly so that I would feel more easily if I disturbed an amphibian.

Over the six years we’ve lived here, the behavior of the toads in our garden has changed. They accept our garden as an ideal environment, traveling to stop at our water puddles, foraging in our area, burrowing under the black plastic and wandering around the garden. What my mother did not expect was that the toads would begin making permanent homes under the stones of the garden bed. This year, when my mother was in the garden, she realized that one of them—Fezzika—had dug a homey burrow to live in. This toad is an especially large female Woodhouse toad, as jumpy as any other when we walk around. My mother decided that we could name her “Fezzika” in honor of the giant in The Princess Bride because the toad is so large.

She wasn’t the only toad who moved in. Not long after we found Fezzika, we discovered that another toad had similarly excavated a spot under another flat stone in the herb bed. Slightly smaller than Fezzika, it had dug a sideways tunnel against the rock only a few inches away from our lemon thyme. It also seems that some of the toad homes are community burrows. A couple years ago, there was a gopher hole under one of our peach trees. Not only one toad lived in here. There were one or two others, and even a tiger salamander that shared the burrow with them.

Before Fezzika had moved in, the toads had generally only dug into the softer soil of the garden, first in the tilled soil of the old plots, then into the shovel-turned soil in the raised beds. They sometimes hibernated in the beds, and they liked moving in and out from beneath the black weed barrier. We would often find holes in the beds where one had spent the day in a burrow. Our garden was clearly a good environment for them, with plenty of water and insects to support their diet. The only slight downturn was that our cats prowled the garden and sometimes batted at them, but our felines usually left the toads to themselves. They certainly never ate them.

One reason the cats leave the toads alone (besides our chastisement) is that toads produce a gland toxin called bufotalin. This toxin is stored in large sacs slightly behind the Woodhouse toad’s eyes. It’s a milky substance that, if it enters the bloodstream, can cause increased heart rate or other heart problems because it has effects like digitalis, or Foxglove. It also has a distinctly bad taste.

Female Woodhouse toads are generally bigger than the males, and they can be as long as four inches. Once, when I was at a pond with some friends and we were catching toads, I caught a large brown toad that was possibly a Woodhouse. It had the characteristic light dorsal stripe but was a brown color, something I had never seen in Woodhouse toads before.

Just down the street from us is a large pond formed by runoff from the irrigation sprinklers in the alfalfa field above. From March to July, we can hear the male Woodhouse toads in the pond. The males emit a long, wailing call that can be compared to a sheep with a serious cold. The males use these calls to attract the females to ideal breeding waters.

Woodhouse toads deposit long strings of eggs numbering from twenty to forty eggs per strand in relatively still waters. Once these hatch, the tadpoles feed on debris in the pond, gradually maturing as they grow legs, lose their tails, and finally become tiny toads, no bigger than the nail of my little finger. From there, it takes three years for the toad to fully mature into the sizes of those amphibians now inhabiting our garden.

Unlike frogs, toads have a thicker skin that they can absorb water through. When the toads sat in the plastic container of water during the night it was to have a drink through their skin. Once they mature from tadpoles, the toads can wander as long as they like, being sure to stop at puddles and ponds to stay hydrated.

Now that the toads have come as far as digging rock-roofed homes in the garden, it doesn’t seem likely they’ll leave. My mother hopes that sometime we’ll be able to build a pond of our own, a little piece somewhere in the backyard that will encourage the toads even further. They’ve become year-round neighbors for us and interesting creatures to study. Toads eat a large assortment of insects in our garden, everything from flies to slugs, when slugs appear. Their presence is a welcome addition to the garden ecosystem.

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Val K. is thirteen years old and lives in a house in the Utah desert with her family, her carnivorous plants, a dog, five cats, and several toads. In between the times she spends writing, she works on crafts involving building, embroidery, gardening and more and also takes time to read incredibly long epic novels. She spends what is left of her free time writing fantasy stories and has a book written and a sequel in the works.

Boy: I can’t see anything!

The mayor: We must do something!

All: But what?

Town folks: Ask the king!

Mayor: Not the king!

Boy: That is a good idea.

Mayor: The king does not rule the skies.

Narrator: So, everybody thought…

Boy: We could ask the wind to blow the dark cloud away.

Town folks: Good idea!

Boy: Wind!

Wind: What.

Boy: Could you blow the cloud away?

Wind: If the king lets me blow down whatever I want.

Mayor: I’ll go ask the king.

Narrator: The mayor reluctantly goes to the king’s palace. He tells the king what the wind wants. The king agrees to the plan. So the wind blew the cloud away. But from that day on the wind blew things down.

End.

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Virginia is 10 yrs old and she wrote this for school. She likes reading. Her favorite thing to read is a series of books called Warriors, by Erin Hunter. She likes catching fireflies, too.

The winner of the Spring Poetry Runoff’s Admin Award is Gabriel Aresti Jr. (aka Ángel Chapparo Sainz) for his poem, “Nospringland.” For his prize, he chose to receive Warren Hatch’s Mapping the Bones of the World.

All the poems submitted to the Spring Poetry Runoff form a stunning garden of springtime delights and more than fulfill the celebration’s intent to welcome spring via communal voice.   The fine language of many of the poems attracts my attention sharply.  But I had to choose one.  I chose “Nospringland” for the Admin Award for its heart, its sentiment, and—against all its appearances of being a simple poem in language and form—the intricate way it threads into a complex tapestry—the Basque separatist movement in the poet’s homeland.  “Homeland,” of course, is the matter the conflict holds in question.  Also at the heart of the conflict—preservation of the unique Basque language.  The poet’s choice to write and send an English-language poem reflecting the conflict’s effects upon him personally is itself a complex act, not the least of it being the sharing of heartfelt experience with an English-speaking audience.  Furthermore, given the Basque language’s importance to the decades-long conflict and to the poet’s identity, seemingly obvious lines such as “There is no more poetry for your fight” acquire iceberg-like ironic depth and weight.  As I mentioned in the comments on that poem, the use of punctuation—another seemingly simple pattern of choices—also intrigues me for the effects it exerts on the poem’s tone.

While “Nospringland” ran counter-clockwise to the general tone of the Spring Poetry Runoff, I found the poem’s language a deeply moving and necessary reminder that spring does not appear the same to all eyes.  What I might take for granted as a season to gather in communal festivities can in another invoke, in the changing of light and flowering of warmth and spring colors and in shared language, painful ironies of separation and the continued intrusion of the killing season into a celebrated time of rebirth.  Thanks, Ángel, for sending that poem.

to snag the frosty mornings. Mallards will
not light upon the weir, and open skies
remove their lightest blue. The fallow rose
is waiting for the spring–and like my eyes,

discolored branches search for green. I’ll count
the small supernal stars that heaven yields
until the dismal gray has passed, then smile
when May’s sweet-smelling earth perfumes the fields.

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For Karen’s bio and other Spring Poetry Runoff entries go here and here.

“Waiting for Spring” was first published by The Pregnant Moon.

*Contest entry*

Of course, one problem that arises from the general nature-human disconnect is that of faltering literacy.  Lacking their own spirituality-nature approach, some readers of scripture find the outdoorsy contexts and nature-hued saturation levels of many scriptural stories and passages mysterious and obscure, or maybe quaint and thick, rather like how the King James version of the Bible loses some students of scripture with its Shakespearean-era rhetorical density.

Wilderness Interface Zone is nothing if not interested in promoting literacy, especially nature-literacy.  So to honor and enjoy scripture’s endearing and enduring traditional affinities with nature and to  encourage folks to throw themselves into experience with nature–even just parks, with trees, grass, ducks, and space to fly kites–to improve their scriptural literacy, we’re running Poems of Biblical Proportions Week.  WIZ is soliciting poetry (or even poetic creative nonfiction) based in both scripture and nature.  Mp3s of music combining  nature and scriptural themes are also of interest.  Your work need not be based in the Bible only.  It may reference any scriptural source, such as the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, etc.

To submit a poem, creative non-fiction essay, mp3, or other poetry-like venture containing both scriptural and natural wavelengths, see our guidelines here.

Here’s a list of the new pics.

One of ten Elberta peaches our sapling trees produced this year–their first crop.

Tha Hurd: these are the horses I’ve been writing about in my “Horse opera” posts, minus the palomino gelding.  Left to right: the rear end of the palomino foal, its mother (I thought she was a palomino, but now I think she might be a bay with a flaxen mane), the silver dun (note her cool dorsal stripe), and the yellow dun stallion.  In the foreground, my daughter Val and her ponytail.

Pepis wasp–also called a tarantula hawk–on horsetail milkweed (also there’s an ant).  We had a stand of this erupt in the yard this summer.  It’s considered an invasive species and is also toxic to stock, but we have no stock.  The variety of insects the milkweed drew into the yard astounded and delighted us.  I think it valuable for how many species it supports.  Tarantula wasps up to two inches long flew in, following scent trails of the milkweed’s pollen.  Our European paper wasps visited the milkweed, along with golden digger wasps, mud daubers, American paper wasps, and a host of others we have yet to identify.  

A butterfly–species unknown–and a wasp or hornet–species also unknown–on the milkweed.

Grizzly bear prickly pear fruit.  These turned even redder before dropping off the pads. 

Masonry walls in a side canyon emptying into Crossfire Canyon.  These walls and structures whose photos we’ve added date back to later stages of the prehistoric Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) occupation of southeastern Utah and other Four Corners states. 

An Ancestral Puebloan structure tucked into a narrow alcove in the same side-canyon.  

A detail of the double lintel beam in the above structure.  I thought it was interesting as well as pleasing to the eye.

Masonry structure from another angle with interesting shadow and light play around it.

A masonry doorway into another structure in the side canyon.  I love this doorway–it looks like it leads into deeper mystery.  Or maybe into Shelob’s lair.

An upright lizard, a fence swift.  These lizards seem to like having their pictures taken.  Other lizards won’t stand for it.  What I really want is a picture of a collared lizard or a Colorado collared lizard.  Very flashy, and they will also smile for the camera.

Close-up of a horse skull that I found, part of a nearly complete skeleton.

A detail of the above horse’s cervical (neck) bones, still mostly articulated.  I find this picture fascinating.

Fuzzy stuff–not entirely sure what it is.  Old man’s beard, maybe?

As usual, profound thanks to son Saul for taking all these pictures.

Th.
Nephi Anderson (via Th.’s gravelly voice)
Mark Bennion
Tyler Chadwick
greenfrog
green mormon architect
Elizabeth R.

And, of course, many thanks to WIZ’s loyal readers and commenters.

I appreciate each writer’s help keeping People Month on WIZ interesting and fun.  We’ll do it again next year (maybe earlier), so start drawing up your People Month writing plans now.

When early autumn’s storm wrung from the clouds
Summer, wearing the last thundering rain thin
And sharp on the wind’s rasp; when thorns
Of the first frost bloomed over the grass,
And the morning glory hung brown and bitten
On the garden fence; on those first nights
Of cold window glass and the drip of chill
Onto the plank, when I wrapped in the blanket
And the dog curled at my feet, I heard,
Above the clay clink of wind-churned chimes,
Above the wag of the unlatched screen door,
Round blows of fruit fall against the ground.

I have been here three years’ windfall
Not hearing the bump of pears, but when the tree
Burst blossoms against the window, I watched
Crawl across the floor shadow from thousands
Of swaying cups lifted into the storm of pollens,
And when after petals leaves screwed from the nodes,
I looked out into green overcast: fruit had pushed
Off flower and bent down boughs as with old age,
But more mystic that blunt drop of fruit earthward
That jerked my ear like a new word.

Someone else should hear it: I could better tell
How, when the wind rattled its sticks upon the houses,
I heard a pear fall to a bruising; how it struck
Above the rip of water from passing cars’ tires;
How, as I let slip with sleep my garment of senses,
A tree caught the last thread and plucked it
With a ripe pear; and how I lay awake beneath rainy
Leaves or sat for spells by the window, as one haunts
Heaven those nights her globes bear down the branch
For a single star to fall away in flame.

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“The Pear Tree” was the winner of the 1987 BYU Eisteddfod Crown Competition for a lyric poem.  It was published in Irreantum 4.2 (2006): 99.

My son Saul took these pictures using a Kodak DX6490.  He shot somewhere around four hundred photographs, from which we chose these seventeen.  Many spring flowers haven’t yet bloomed.  Hopefully, we’ll be able to get nice shots of can’t-be-missed subjects to add to this collection.

Locations for the subjects of these new photos include the rim of Crossfire Canyon, Kane Gulch, and our back yard, all in southeastern Utah.  The male black-chinned hummingbird (Archilochus alexandri) is one of the hummers frequenting our back porch feeders.  Saul took the closeup of the honeybee (Apis mellifera) on a dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) in our yard.  Dandelions have their charm, of course, but there’s something gorgeous about honeybees.  As my daughter says, “They look like their own honey.”

The cactus pictures are from Crossfire’s rim.  Those reddish flowers bloom on claret cup cactus (Echinocereus triglochidiatus), a type of hedgehog cactus.  I believe those wide-eyed pink flowers erupt on another type of hedgehog cactus, Engelmann’s hedgehog (Echinocereus engelmannii). 

The striking photos of aspen trees (white-barked trunks) against stone were taken in Kane Gulch, part of the Grand Gulch Primitive Area.  I’ve never seen aspen trees like these before—they have completely  different bearing and branch structure from aspens I’m used to seeing.  They belong to the genus Populus, to which the cottonwood tree also belongs, but I’m not sure what this particular species of aspen is named.   If you, dear reader, know the scientific name of this species of aspen tree, please tell us all.

With the exception of the old photo of the colorful green and purple rock stratigraphy, taken in Montezuma Canyon, the rockforms are all from Kane Gulch.  The detail of the streaks of black patina on sandstone I thought had animals fur tones to it, fun to look at.   The old science on how such a patina comes to glaze stone was that water either leached or carried in minerals and deposited them on rock surfaces in the course of its downward flow.  More recent science suggests that microbiotic organisms actually import the patina materials for their own purposes, but as far as I know, no one understands yet what those purposes are.  I would guess some kind of stabilization work.

The lizards are members of the swift family, genera Sceloporus and Uta, a rather varied group of lizards, especially in Kane Gulch, where these photos were shot.  As I more specifically identify the species I’ll post information.  An interesting note: Some lizards like to have their pictures taken.  They not only run up to you out of curiosity but will sit still long enough for you to get a good bead on them.  Generally, the friendlier lizards were females.  The larger, blue-throated and blue-bellied males usually ran away without so much as a “Humph.”  The one exception is the lizard posed along a slightly inclined piece of angular stone.   If you look closely, you can see a bit of his blue underbelly.

The stunning red flowers with a trumpet shape to their unified petals are, I think, scarlet gilia (Ipomopsis aggregata), also called desert trumpet, a member of the phlox family.  That picture was taken in Kane Gulch.  The blue flowers are blue flax (Linum lewisii) growing in my garden.   The “lewisii” part of the scientific name honors Thomas Jefferson’s secretary Meriwether Lewis of the 1804-1806 Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery expedition commissioned to explore the West.  At the rate these flowers are spreading in the yard, in a few years we’ll have enough to make our own linseed oil. 

The leafing sapling twig is some kind of willow, maybe a coyote willow, also located in Kane Gulch.  The creamy yellow flowers filling their frame grow on the cliffrose bush, Purshia stansburyana, a member of the Rosaceae, or rose family.  This time of year, these flowers lend to the desert their heavy perfume.

We also have, of course, berries of the Utah juniper, Juniperus osteosperma, taken during our winter shoot, but these trees still hold many of their blue berries in May.

Always fun to go out and shoot these photos.   To make new photos appear in the gallery window, simply refresh your screen.  Reader corrections and elaborations are welcome; please add them in the comments section.