Nature's Place

The Flood

Well, ‘a’ flood. It seems the great Australian drought is truly over. Two years of rain now and it doesn’t look like letting up. Last year I was flooded out of my downstairs home and this year I was prepared for it, or so I thought. I wasn’t.

I did what I thought was needed, according to what happened last year, but this year it just didn’t stop pouring and the rain overwhelmed my preparations and I am typing this in a rain soaked room. No matter, just a little inconvenient and tiring – cleaning up. But no electrical equipment, like cameras or computers, was damaged – so far.

When you live on the ground it’s as well to keep everything off it, and so I did. This is my cave after all, and I know my ground. Just got a little careless is all. :)

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I have been watching a bee that has made her nest in a piece of bamboo stuck in a flower pot by the front stairway. She feeds well on the plants I bought, with lovely small purple flowers that just keep burgeoning. I knew the rain was coming; forecasts here are usually accurate so we take heed when a storm is brewing.

There is a short log of soft wood that I had been meaning to drill for its use to the flying population of the garden and it got done in preparation for the storm. But instead of it being of any use to anything as a shelter it simply became a block to the force of the wind and rain so the bee is protected from the worst of it.

And it seems to be working. Every now and then we, I and the bee, meet at the bottom of the stairway as she is coming or going from her hidey hole and she doesn’t mind me at all. That’s a small pleasure to me, accepted by a bee, a wild thing that sees no danger in me, can’t say the same for the civilised things.

No mind to that though, civilised things are a bane to nature, just a process man – the race – is passing through. Nature will survive us; I have no doubt, in spite of, or because of my knowledge of self. We just aren’t as big and destructive as we would sometimes like to believe. Pussies of the universe really. :)

But not pussy cats, nothing so cute as new born nature, some of it anyway.

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The rain has surely been washing the place down. Anything not holding on high enough will have been drowned or washed away. But that’s not Armageddon, that’s nature, and what would we be without it. Stuck, as when nothing moves, that’s for sure.

Not stuck now, and I think I’ll go check up on the wild life in the nearby fields today. It’s perfect weather for finding the rare creatures that are usually hiding or just living out of sight.

What a wonderful nature we have. Indeed! All those God made things that come from this one God made thing – it’s just a word unless you emotionalise it, so don’t.

My great pleasure, in the absence of my great love …

This is the way for today.

Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab

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