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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Nature's Place 
I revel in your photos, your perceptive and descriptive meanderings into humanity and our interactions with nature. Macro photography fascinates me; I’d get lost in a microscope for hours in the Terrestrial Invertebrates department at the SA Museum. Hope you get to take advantage of the critters that start to appear from the flush the rains have brought. Looking forward to seeing more :)
Thanks Nyla. It’s funny how the mind can work on the simplest of communications. :)
The “Flush”, a great word for what is happening in the field, and in the mind. Yes, it is a wonder at the level of the usually unseen. Such beauty and magic could only have been conjured for the likes of you and me who look there. Children in the rain.
‘Children in the rain’. What a beautiful response! Thank you Mark. I share your new (and past) blogs with friends online… to encourage them to slow down and drink in the beauty that I see. I’m afraid not everyone has this view on life though!
Hello Nyla. Not everyone can, we have to get weary of speeding first …
i love nature. i alway bring along my camera and shot some photos of nature elements. But i think i need to master the knowledge of approching them. You know..like how to understand their habits, habitats and so on. When i do this, now i’m realised how hard is you doing your job Mark, my friend. Is not easy. I remember what you said last time…practice practice and practice…
i will follow you in this blog and please teach me, guide me
thanks for sharing this my friend
Hello Michael Jamiun. There’s only one way to know your subject and that is to spend time with it. So being in nature is the key, nature is the subject, the smaller forms are its presentations and you get to know them by being still inside and observing, in the first instance. When you have observed a creature you move in with respect for its nature, every thing knows to survive and if it senses danger it will do what it does to live. Some things fly, others fight, and others still do nothing at all, just sit there. But you never know what nature is going to do, not really, and that’s one of the beauties of it, it’s unpredictable. And in that is the life and the wonder.
The predictable is easy so you move on when you do enough of that, then something unforeseen presents and the wonder and beauty of the unknown touching the unknowable are back. You see? It’s not about the picture, or it is but the picture comes from a way of being simple and not looking for anything out of it. Of course it works either way but I choose the way of being …
Thanks my friend Mark for your explanation, your tips for being in nature. I should consider my times after this for being in nature. The more i spend for observing, the more i learn. This is great to know you..will ask you later if i have any question about it..
No problem Michael. It’s simple really. And the more you do it the easier it gets. When you have questions just ask …
Awesome shot and feeling for your bee :O)
Being amongst them and taking photos of those pretty insects does change you.
It is a subtle but humanizing thing.
Been out between showers and had a good time up at elanora park in wynnum. Lots of shiny harlequin bugs
there atm on the hibiscus bushes.
Always love getting your update emails.
James
Hello James. It does change you, being out in nature. Because what you acknowledge has an effect inside. There’s no insanity in nature, only in people, so you can only get saner the more time you spend in nature. People have known this for a very long time but it’s too simple for our ever complicating minds.
Lovely photo as usual. I often find the same insect in the same area, and that makes me happy to think it sticks around. Last summer there was a small Katydid that lived on a rose bush for about three weeks – it was a daily task to see if I could find it and take a photograph. Sadly, I have not seen any this year yet.
Thanks Sue. That’s acknowledging nature, the sense of it. Looking, seeing it, delighting in it. If the Katydid doesn’t show up something else will. You just have to see what is there instead of looking for what is not. :)
i love how you have a relationship, of sorts with this bee
i have never thought of getting to know insects
i might enjoy them when i find them, but did not realize i could learn about where they land for the evening and visit them…
i wish you well during your down pouring rain
and as you wander the wilds and explore
i am off to do the same, but on xc skis
That’s just it Tammie. We all have a relationship with nature, only we have forgotten. And we have to get it back or we are lost, inside. We will be lost to the beauty and wonder of the undeniable and unnameable intelligence behind the simple sense of things. That is the only tragedy – never mind the overblown Greeks, or ‘World Events’. And without the nature that takes care of all we eat and drink we are not sustainable. Yet we go on as if nature is something to be feared or tamed instead of something to be respected, nurtured and even loved.
I’m afraid the human race has had its day. We have come to a global society for the first time in history and it will now begin to break down, it already is. That is the way of things. They grow until they take as much space as they can, they flower and seed, then die. It’s only natural but it’s happening unnaturally. We are mad, the race of men is mad. We still think a profit is ok when a profit is something for nothing.
It’s just not sustainable, so it doesn’t make sense. But what’s coming has to come or we’ll never learn the lesson; don’t forget where you come from – nature, just like the bees. :)
And then there’s the Real Discipline.
Hope you dont get to wet mate. It seems to have subsided here on the mid north coast. the river broke its banks. but did not go to far.
The animals are loving the rain though!.
Stay safe and relatively dry
Already done Scott. Water has a way of getting in everywhere when there’s enough of it. :)
Simply fabulous…
Thanks Lemony …