#oh pics of winter clean air my beloved

[nobody-knose--archive]

well i got home a lot earlier than i thought i would today, which i’m happy for seeing as the place was filled to the brim with people not wearing masks. like this place is normally decently busy this time of year but it was packed to the goddam brim today for some reason. anyway! i took pictures of the place for reference, and whenever i get around to carving the pumpkins we picked out i’ll share pics of that as well. this is lowkey going to be an advertisement for the place because if you ever visit the central valley you really should come around here, especially if you are/have kids it’s amazing. starting from the top.

[image description: a picture of a creek bluff. in the foreground are some ground brush cast in shadow. in the middle ground is some long yellow grasses in patchy sunlight taking up the space where a creek would run if there was rain around here (california). slightly up the hill is a small footbrigde connecting a path that goes from left to right along the side of the bluff. just behind it in the background is the side of a small hill that’s covered in the same long yellow grass from before, and the sky is clear and blue where at the top of the bluff. scattered throughout are oak trees, some small and young, and a few that are old, tall, & mighty. end image description.]

y’all are so lucky i managed to get pictures without people there were so damn many. my older brother was freaking out the entire time about catching corona (he’s nd but he’s in denial about it) and ive decided that for the sake of this post & onwards i’ll be referring to my older brother as Idon & my younger brother as Dr. Lion given that those are dumb unused nicknames we have for each other and it’s easier than referring to them as my older & younger brother all the time. anyway the whole area is set up in this lil creekbed area and normally when it’s winter & it’s not hot n stuff (twas decently hot today, tshirt shorts & no jacket weather in the sun) there’s a bit of water that runs through it. the rest of the time it’s dry and people will walk straight to it to get to the bluffside trail that features a handful of small attractions like a tiny castle, tunnel, metal slide, & other things that appeal to all the children that can fit in them. this place is basically the hotspot for any and all children in this county youve just gotta come here some time it’s so damn fun. there’s even a swinging rope bridge over the creek that leads to the bluffside trail that’s raised way up in the air and is an honestly harrowing experience for every kid who goes across it i could talk about this place for hours. i havent even brought up the train line that goes around the tree farm & things at the top of the bluff. anyway

[image description: a picture of a pumpkin patch, taken from behind a few stalks of corn. the field is full of pumpkin plants with their large, green leaves extended into the air, though there’s no pumpkins visible. there are various flowers i believe to be carnations dotted throughout the patch, in shades of  light pink, magenta, orange, and red, and a few stalks of corn also grow in the patch. in the distance a field of corn that doubles as a small maze grows off to the right, and lining the background is a row of large trees that grow along the creekbed behind them. the sky is bright blue & clear from the upper left part of the picture it can be seen in. end image description]

so one attraction of this place (one thing that gives it such an appeal to people who want aesthetic pictures for instagram & whatnot) is that they always set up little pumpkin people all over the place, taking various poses. when i say pumpkin people i mean basically scarecrows, clothing stuffed with straw & posed doing things, but with pumpkins for heads. most of them are out of the way enough that people cant mess with them but can take pictures like i did here. oh can you not see it? well let me just zoom in for you-

[image description: a zoomed in picture of the scene described above. clearly shown is a scarecrow-type figure with a pumpkin for a head standing up in the field. it’s wearing a rather nondescript grey shirt, blue jeans, and a floppy brown farmer’s hat. it’s surrounded by pumpkin plants, carnations, & corn stalks, with a corn field to the back & more large trees casting shadows to the back, as indicated above. there are also some large leaves from corn plants directly in front of the camera where it’s taking the picture, taking up a large chunk of the picture. end image description]

here it is! this is the only one i took a picture of because it was the only one i could possibly find the time to capture without it being swarmed by other people. i was really lucky to take these pictures without anyone in the background here it’s honestly hard to tell from what i’m showing but there was an obscene amount of people there, hence why we barely spent 1.5 hours there. i suspect idon’s unending stream of complaints and fretting and honest request to tell every member of our extended family that we’d have to quarantine for the next 2 weeks got us out a bit faster than we wouldve otherwise done but eh. that stuff’s especially ironic considering dr lion’s going back to physical school starting this week but hey what can ya do. we wore our masks. homemade by my mother because she had nothing better to do the first few weeks of quarantine and now i’m just rambling about my home life. moving on

[image description: a picture of a string of lightbulbs, focused on one in particular that’s completely shattered. behind, various trees, oaks being the only ones i can name, fill up almost the entire background. blue sky can be seen through the branches of a tree to the upper right portion of the picture. for the most part only the lightbubs & the tree closest to it, taking up the rightmost portion of the photo, are illuminated by the sun. end image description]

this is making me realize i didnt take many good pictures. i only took this one because ive got a story behind it but hey i’ll be coming back this winter to pick out a pine tree probably bc they double as a pine tree farm as well as a pumpkin patch and general creekbluff attraction so i can get some better pictures of the area when there’s less people. hopefully. anyway you see how that lightbulb’s broken? well i being the lil aspiring biologist i am saw a bone lying in the dirt next to our car when we were leaving and immediately picked it up. it was picked clean, almost certainly by ants or something, and i was kinda hoping it was the product of some owl because there are a lot of those in the area around the creek, but my family decided twas but the product of some other family’s picnic there. what it was doing in the parking lot i’d love to know, but i couldnt bring it with me (”that’s disgusting” it’s picked clean dirty & dusty lying in the dirt i guarantee it’s not got anyone’s dna on it any more but that of the chicken it came from) so i take a step closer to the treeline to throw it away. and then of course where does it go after i release it from my hand but directly into one of the lightbulbs hanging up by a string all along the outside of the parking lot. whoopsy. so of course i take a picture as soon as i’m done explaining it to my family & freaking out about doing actual damage to this beloved creek pumpkin patch/pine tree farm. then we have a brief argument on whether to tell the staff about it (there’s actual broken glass what else can we do) and so we drive up to the guy sitting there watching people leave, giving directions, our mom rolls down the window, and i, on the opposite side of the car from him, barely get out a proclamation along the lines of “there’s a broken lightbulb down in the parking lot with glass on the ground” he says “ok sure” and we leave. it takes me like 5 minutes to calm down from that which i dont get because we do a whole expedition up to the top of the bluff to see the construction theyre doing to the train line that theyve been working on for years & we dont even get out of the car to walk around because a. social distancing we already took off our masks & they have to be tied on it’s too much work to put it back on and b. the sheer number of cars there was menacing so we just sorta drove around and glanced down the side of the bluff to the best of our abilities. god that’s a damn paragraph. it’s been an hour. <3 i guess