Double Summer
Rain came with the cooling of summer and the autumn has turned to a mild spring, as far as some creatures and flowers are concerned. And the sunshine at this time is lovely, bright and warm. Beautiful, in a word, though the word can’t hold it.
It seems some of the forms of life here can’t stand the heat of summer and hold off blossoming and mating until it ends. Walking in the nearby fields for a couple of days it became clear a new season had begun, not autumn or summer. Dragonflies are back in another wave, along with some bugs and many butterflies. Some flowers are lighting up the woods with bright yellow, a lovely sense of yellow, purple too. And small delicate white signs along the forest and fields floor.
I looked down the track for a distance and I could see all the signs of spring. Butterflies chasing each other in the warm afternoon sunlight, fluttering this way and that. Caterpillars climbing about the leaves, demolishing them as they go. Dragons darting about, taking rest in the last of the days sunlight. Ladybirds and ants climbing about the branches. Spiders, running and hunting.
So many little creatures, characters of the Earth’s intelligence. And flowers, aspects of the Earths beauty. Seeding silk grasses blowing wildly in the wind suggesting a new dawn.
In this ancient land the ‘seasons’ are all variations on summer.
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The other night I heard a disturbance played out on the wooden floorboards upstairs, a shouting, the sound of things falling and footsteps I didn’t recognise. I went up to see what was happening and found an alarmed human, a stricken cat that I was told had jumped four feet in the air off the bed – sensing something strange in the darkness of the night, and a possum looking a bit lost. Instead of presence, it seems, everybody took fright.
Until recently the back door upstairs had been left open for the cat to come and go. With the recent cooling and windy weather it had been closed. The possum that lives in the roof got hungry and broke through the flyscreen on the kitchen window but didn’t remember to go out that way and ended up in the bedroom where the cat sleeps.
When I got there and turned on the light the possum was wandering about the kitchen floor looking for a way out so I herded him towards the door and up the veranda post he went to the ceiling, cool as a cucumber. There I got a picture of him and he didn’t seem to mind at all, he only wanted to get away from the trouble and calm down.
So that’s where the cat food had been going. The habit of hunger satisfied drove him in. A habit to be broken.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Where’s that ant going?
That’s not an ant, that’s a tree hopper. I believe, could be wrong. Best to get to the end of the need to believe anything at all. Sharpen the will, oh well.
And he’s going away to who knows where. I know, because I caught him and I let him go. He went to where all tree hoppers go, the garden. To do what tree hoppers do, survive as long as possible, and make little tree hoppers.
Anyway, it’s best not to hold on to anything that passes. If it can be helped.
And now he’s coming again, can’t predict ‘em. Not me anyway.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Rain … on some colourful characters
It has rained on and off for weeks now, or so it seems, little sense of time. Everything outside is wet, and everything inside is damp. But it is not cold, to me.
In the bush today at Mt Cotton it was lovely to see the dams were full, lovely water, cool and wet. Muddy tracks too. The wild forms of life are still numerous and enjoying the change of temperature, though some die, as always. Some live too.
On one particular young flowering bottlebrush tree I observed the ant’s perennial search for nourishment force an encounter with an intransigent creature, a tiny Cicada. The ants were all over it but didn’t know how to make any impression on it to react, it was armoured to them, untouched.
Hoverfly came to inspect a purple flower just above the ground, tiny wasp took sustenance from another pink flower, red eyed dragonfly rested in the shadows until I disturbed it – a colourful young beauty indeed, two red and black ladybugs mated on the leaf of a short plant, colourful spider ate a ladybug in the safety of the web, young toad looked me in the eye while I took his photo.
A shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds and lit up a small yellow flower from amongst the shadows, a young tree frog sat on the fence and didn’t move while everything else happened around him, and golden ant prowled the red terrain in search of what ants seek.
Majestic electric blue moth crossed my path. Gecko sat for me on the whitewashed wall behind the window grating, eyeballed me too. And a few more of natures creatures passed on by.
As I was leaving this cool wet place the sun shone warm through the trees and lit up the path.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge (nine below)
Season’s End
Summer is winding down from the piercing white light and stifling humid heat to cooler blue grey rain with occasional cold, if it can be said Brisbane ever really gets cold. Autumn is here. The colours change. There are fewer creatures to shoot but the ones there are also slow down with the temperature, as I do. It’s a seasonal thing, everything is.
The Dragon, herald of change and action, came and went according to its season, is still here in lesser numbers and no less beautiful. The Grasshopper, local symbol of success in leaps and bounds, filled the gap between the waves of Dragons. And Flies, Caterpillars, Moths, Wasps, Flowers and Spiders all take their place in the multidimensional sense of my life.
There is a time to move and a time to stay, a time for yes and a time for nay. Who knows which is which till its done? Not I. For sure. Though I see it coming, inside, where it hasn’t taken form just yet. Nonsense to some I know, but not to me. Everything has its season, even the unknown, the invisible. You see?
Flood, storm, rain or shine. On the black screen of mind. Whatever may be.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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