Hello, Briggs. I'm an old colleague of Xian's, and I've been interested in True Dirt since he linked to the Hills Fire piece. My wife and I also garden (OK; she gardens) with a combination of natives, other drought-tolerant stuff, and inherited things like oleander. Anyway, I have one minor pedantic quibble: although the squashed little guy at the right is certainly a newt, the baby salamanders under your woodpile probably aren't.
Newts breed in water, so AFAIK baby newts are essentially tadpoles--completely aquatic larvae with gills that are replaced with lungs as the newt matures. The other salamanders you're seeing are probably one of our local lungless salamanders, which lay eggs in moist places out of water. These guys all breathe through their skin and skip the transformation stage, so you'll find juveniles as well as adults. Locally we have slender salamander (like an earthworm but with tiny, vestigial legs), ensatina (stockier and with a burgundy color similar to a newt), and arboreal salamander (also stocky and more or less black).