Summer Time …
… and the livin’s easy. Well, livin’s never that but there are many different small creatures about for me to investigate with the camera. And that’s a pleasure, if not easy.
I went down the old Mt Cotton scout camp today for a wander around a few known trails. By the pleasantly aged buildings there is a garden planted by the young boys, I don’t know when. There are many flowers there at the moment and they attract the tiny native bees.
And where one insect goes there are usually more who follow, or just make their own way there. One doesn’t necessarily follow the other, or does it? Anyway, it wasn’t long before I had to give up on the little black bees, they just move too fast. Zip, zip, zip, in and out. I must have got two keepers out of about one hundred shots, not good.
Then I noticed a little black cricket, I think it is. Ninja cricket, I call it, with a short yellow saddle on its back. It was very interested in the small black bees and was slowly making its way towards one on a flower but they were just too fast for it, and not nearly numerous enough to be caught.
I was looking around for what else may be in the vicinity and there was one of the little brown frogs from early spring, only now it was turning green though not much bigger. It was also in position to catch some black bees, up on the leaf about the flower, but after a few shots it jumped away down the plant.
And there was a golden ant taking some of the honey I left out for the bees, which they never touched. Enjoying a long sup of a most wonderful food not often experienced in the world of ant. Food of the gods ant, making the most of it.
A few other creatures came and went. Like the green eyed fly. She landed on my booted foot and slowly made her way up my ankle where I got a few shots. Then she was off to the garden where I got a few more. She had a lazy way about her and at one time she was determined to examine my camera.
She rose up from the greenery and came slowly towards me. At first I thought she was after landing on me and I moved away but she went straight to the camera and walked around it tasting, as flies do. After a while I shooed her away and she landed in the garden again and we both went about our business. She grooming herself and me taking her picture.
As I left the garden for the wilder trails I met a small grey kangaroo, no picture. We have met before and I called out to her and she was hesitant, not knowing whether to run or not. In the end she opted to keep a safe distance of about ten yards but she is getting used to me now. I must remember to bring her some good food next time.
Down towards the water I went to see the wasps at a nest I know of, native wasps. They are small dark hued creatures and like all wasps are alert to any intrusion. I am always careful when in the bush but particularly around wasps as they are very active in defense of their nest. It’s a good idea to give them no cause to interpret any action as aggressive, as they will attack. David and Goliath style.
But their sting is not at all bad, not like the European wasp or paper wasp. It’s like a small electric current that rapidly diminishes, but uncomfortable all the same.
Another fly landed at my feet on the boardwalk around the dam, just two shots of this one. Magnificent creature, colours and form. It is extraordinary the beauty of these creatures up close, that is so easily overlooked by the unaided eye.
A dragonfly also presented himself, lovely young yellow thing. Sat on his perch for me to get a few good shots and away he went. Nothing stays the same for long in the bush. Everything is always moving, staying alive if it can. 
Dying if it can’t. Without complaint.
My beautiful nature.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Hot Spot
The Hibiscus tree sustains many forms of life, it’s amazing how many. And their life cycles fit each other, as the tree is coming round to a new generation of flower buds the little Harlequins are ready for them, juicy morsels. Just as the assassin bugs came along when the little Harlequins were about to appear. And the small reddish brown bugs live on through it all. Everything fits in.
When I went looking at the plants around the hibiscus I found it was just the same, abundant in different forms of life, at different stages of development. There are hot spots in the forest for insect life and this tree and its surrounds is one. You can go to other trees and plants and not see a living thing, until you get up close.
And then if you go there regularly you will find the kinds of creatures come and go with no apparent reason but you can sense the perfect rhythm of it all. But none is more populated than this one Hibiscus tree.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Wild Hibiscus Tree – Harlequin and Friends
I’ve been observing the activity and tracking the residents for a while now, down in the forest, on the wild Hibiscus tree. The tree has white flowers with a dark red heart, beautiful clean colour when new. And a contrast that reaches deep inside, in sense.
The leaves have been mostly eaten for a while now, since the tree is also home to a few other creatures besides the Harlequin bug. There are small reddish brown beetles that roam all over the place, including all over the harlequins, who seem to mind quite a bit, getting very agitated when one climbs on their back.
The flower houses a host of squat dark flies that only seem to leave that dark heart when I disturb them, by moving the flower. Lately there has been a burgeoning of other bugs, such as the black and yellow assassins pictured, who seem to transform to the red and yellow beauty by climbing out of their old jacket.
Nothing like a new set of clothes to set you free.
*
The Harlequin is definitely the star of this show though. At first I thought I was lucky to get a few shots of an individual. Then I got a few shots of a few more individuals. That’s when I realised the hibiscus tree is home to these beautiful creatures, they didn’t go away.
Over time I visited the tree and observed the Harlequin bug in the various stages of its development. I watched it mature, eat, commune, grow wings, mate, lay eggs and guard and incubate them. Saw the young hatch and then herd themselves around the tree with the adult looking on for a short while.
It has been an eventful time, Hibiscus Harlequin time.
*
A privilege really, to witness the life of these beautifully coloured creatures. And here you have it in the comfort of your home, no need to go down the bug infested forest, with mozzies and little black biting midges chasing you.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
A Silver Song
Born of the blackness cold, my love.
To colour the light I am. In line and form a ringing.
Afire, in thirst, of experience. The mad singing.
Where change rakes the dead embers of mind.
Pain, old friend. What else.
To buff the point of being I am, a sharpness mirrored round.
Pierce the veil of shadows. That I am found.
Emerge, o silver singer. To do it all once more.
When all I want is Thee my love.
Return, awake, to the shore.
Of death, the boon of Thine.
Come take me home at last, my lord.
Oh. Cold blackness mine.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Whose Art Was That?
It is easy to judge, seeing things positionally, from a place of identity. Partial being. The difficulty is in extracting the value of experience, it should tell all is change while I remain I behind. It does, but it takes a long time, and long pain.
But judgement is a pernicious habit of the machine mind. Which takes its rise from the momentum of life itself, never giving up. As can be seen all around in the forms of nature, or not nature.
The force of it can be overcome. Not by opposition, but by surrender. Surrender of the force. For all force is it. This is being without the force of existence, the power behind – no more need to die.
It is this knowledge that reveals the truth in every body. Living is the art, I am the artist, in any body.
The one artist within. Being art. No exceptions.
The art of being.
*
As I came round the bend of the track in the forest there he was, or was it she. Sitting on a tendril of green overhanging the trodden path, a fly.
Blue, red eyed creature. Little beauty. Unafraid he sat, for long enough to image. Coming and going, and coming again.
A few days later there he was again. Same tendril, same fly.
He winked, I know.
Old friend.
*
Ya just gotta laugh at it all sometimes.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Breakdown
It’s what happens to things. And everything’s a thing so everything breaks down some time.
What makes it time a thing breaks down? It’s time; it’s time to break down. It’s time in the order of things.
All things are ordered. The earth, the solar system, the universe, the whole of existence is ordered. You didn’t think it was disordered, did you?
Being ordered it all breaks down to order, right on time.
It’s bloody perfect. Perfectly ordered.
Perfect breakdown. :)
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Masked Paramour
Sitting in the flower tops, waiting for her love.
Surrounded by the colour blue, and mauve.
Round and round she went to see.
Arms outstretched, but not to me.
Once a beckoning, it seems.
Then strikes a pose, of themes?
I don’t wonder that she would feel.
And along comes a meal.
Not so easy, the meal.
One finds there little appeal.
The other, oh well, away on the wind.
Love returns, eventually, in kind.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
It’s Never Too Late
These shots are of creatures that are seen only around the outside light at night. The largest creature here is the first at about 2mm wide head. The others are so small they are unidentifiable to the naked eye.
To rise up.
It’s never too late to throw off the chains.
Never too late to be new.
It’s never too late to give up the mantra, the one that keeps you from love.
“I can’t!” “Why me?” “It isn’t supposed to be this way.” “Something’s wrong.”
The mantra of mind that sees only what is gone, and never the way it really was, or is.
It’s never too late to say it’s good. Good to be alive! Well done! That’s lovely!
It’s never too late to step out of your skin. The one as me ‘this’ or me ‘that’.
It’s never too late.
*
Well, I suppose it can be too late.
The sun sets, the stars shimmer only once just that way, the same rain never falls twice.
But it’s never too late to dance for the pleasure of it, or sing a little song.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
A Long Way to Market
A journey unto itself, getting my stuff to market. Learning about printing, the ins and outs of mounting – matting, adhesives, pressures, sizes, compositions. People. It’s a job learning to do the job properly. And maybe someone will buy something when I get there.
But on my way to market I saw this spider. An amazing creature. It was a little skittish at first but settled down after a few shots and even sat for me, it could be said.
She is a beauty. Big, young, healthy and most of all untroubled. Sitting there in the vacuity of being spider with nothing in particular to do. Being no thing, until spider has something to do, spider moves.
Being moves as spider.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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