Jacaranda & Co
Wings still unfolded, he was content to wait out on the end of a projection. Safer that way.
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There’s only one direction danger can come from, behind. As long as you don’t fall off in the darkness.
Wave … They often make strange gestures when quiet and alone, exercising their limbs, no doubt.
Here you can see one of its other handicaps, missing lower legs. Who knows how …
And from below … Wing trailing like a cloak for this well dressed beetle.
Eyes feel the need for cleaning. Nature’s creatures spend a lot of time preening, keeping in top condition.
Clearly incapacitated, with no sign of self consideration. We can learn from the fact of nature.
The rain came and soaked the ground, the garden sang out green, and the little creatures came out to play – what they do.
Though there was barely a leaf on the jacaranda tree after a long dry winter it was only a week or so after the rain started it was covered in flowers, famously.
One rainy night I made the most of some christmas beetles knocked to the ground by the force of wind and falling water, some just couldn’t hold on.
Colour and contrast, some of the little beauties in a small patch of nature in the garden.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Bug Rain …
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It has rained for a week, or more … a tree fell across the drive, revealing rot enough three more have to come down, before they fall.
And on the way down it took the top off another healthy tree, full of bugs, that made its way to a bucket of water, to keep it alive while they …
One day there was nothing but the spider to shoot, who is now running out of flowers to hunt on. The next there was more than I could tell.
Ripples in the pond, a drop wets everything it touches.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Mother … Again
… and again.
Up close, without the personal … this spider doesn’t rationalise or emotionalise her situation. She is … the act of sitting. Knowing …
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Sitting in expectation, without a thought, as instinct informs her being something will come to this also active living flower.
Infinite variations in posture, in readiness for that something when it comes. An almost meditative occupation, why not … instinctively.
‘What’s that I see above me, come into my arms, let me show you the way of spider dear. A one way exercise, have no fear.’
Oops! No crack in this hard shelled ladybug, to slip in a pointed lesson in survival, not yours. And ladybug went on her way.
No mercy for the unwary though. She came for food for the hive and became food for the spider. Such is life to one, death to another.
And flies do join the banquet, never far from a feast. No more than providing for young yet … to be … you might think her a beast.
Being dead, no good for a bee. Or is death something else than a little body bent to spider queen. Coup de grâce complete.
… and again.
She stayed the life of the flower, then moved on to the next one. Pretty soon she was in food again, the more abundant honey bee attending.
I helper her along, so she didn’t have to move far, or rely on wind for direction – casting a thread to the currents is how she travels.
She will probably stay on this one for a while, it having multiple heads still to open. Then the butterfly bush should be in bloom.
We’ll see, nothing is sure but the rising and setting of the sun, as long as there is witness to it.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Mother’s Return …
First sighting was on the butterfly bush. She had tacked a few leaves together to form a shelter from which to survey.
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I am always careful not to disturb these small creatures too much but she wasn’t concerned at all, shifting only slightly.
And then I pushed in for a closer shot. Gotta take what is available, she may not be there for what is wanted. Things change.
At some point she climbed onto the sunflower and pulled a few petals over her, to guard her from the world of birds and things.
Upside-down doesn’t seem to bother her, she is just as agile as long as her feet touch something solid and her web holds.
She has no interest in those tiny creatures, hardly worth the effort to capture it seems. Waiting for the prize, a honeybee perhaps.
But not today, that I saw anyway. No doubt she will catch a meal to suit her needs, or she dies. It’s only a matter of nature.
She came with the rain, probably not the same one as – BEFORE.
Out of nowhere she appeared, on a butterfly bush that is two or more weeks from flowering, after a long slow spring.
I noticed her only because of the crumpled looking leaves. How she got there, and so big already, I don’t know. Abseiled in perhaps?
Then, next day, six feet distant, I found her on the sunflowers, where there would be more opportunity to exercise those fine tuned survival instincts.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Nature's Place 
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