Not Another Frog …
First shot available and taken, including dark ordure. Sometimes life just ain’t pretty, or easy.
*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again
It quickly became apparent this horse fly was for posing, even positioning, gently.
Angles available without too much movement to disturb. A much settled fly.
There happened to be the red nasturtium for background. Nice contrast …
Can’t see what I’ve got til I get it back to the computer. They don’t usually stay for seconds.
In for the detail of the business end of things, what bites, draws blood.
With the warming weather comes a burgeoning of forms from the nearby woods to the long garden.
One in recent days is the horse fly. Usually too busy a fly for me to get any shots of at all.
Then, during one of my frequent visits to the garden, I saw this female at rest.
And went to work … what we do.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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A Jewel of Harlequins
On the white flowered Hibiscus in the nearby bush is a small herd of bugs, Harlequins they are called, don’t know why – possibly for the distinctive symmetrical markings on the ‘face’. These ones are real beauties; they go through many different colours in their little lives, blues, greens and reds. And there are times when they can be found with developing wings that make them look like something from a futuristic car show, and very elegant.
Anyway, these last days they are this wonderful blue with hues and patches of green and red and iridescent, overlaid on a very purposeful looking form. A very attractive little jewel of the forest.
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You have to know where to find them as they don’t appear on all Hibiscus plants, only a few I know of. And then you have to know how to handle them, with care of course. But they also respond to a kind of attention so it’s possible to get a few shots without disturbing them unduly.
And when they are done sitting I put then back exactly where I find them. This one is on my stick, the one I use for stabilising the camera at times is also good for shooting on.
I am usually in the nature just for a walk these days as the little people are shy or just not around after the drastic weather of the last year, and health permitting – other bugs I am catching are from visiting children, no fun at all, the bugs caught this way.
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It’s a simple pleasure of mine, this walking and seeing or sensing. To see the colours and form, the movement and the life in it all.
And then I go home, to tend the wildy garden I have encouraged and nurtured.
Just for a while now.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Dry Time
The long year of rain that washed the bugs away has been followed by a long season of dry, and few bugs are emerging that I can find, not even the Ticks. I had anticipated something of the sort with my gardening work, lots of seeds sown and plants watered with a compost area for bugs to eat and congregate in. The Possum likes the fruit as well. So it’s not all void of creatures to enjoy, albeit tiny creatures mostly.
Even so, everywhere I go there are maturing well fed spiders. It looks like food a plenty but could be a survival strategy, get a net up to catch what you can while there is any catching to be done. But we’ll see how things unfold.
What is coming can be predicted in the big picture, more or less, but the details are unknowable in their timing and context. That wonderful unknown.
There is nothing wrong with there being so few bugs, it’s just different. Last year they were so plentiful at the same times there are few or none this year.
The weather is very different this year, wetter, colder, windier and dryer at different times. And still nature is what it is behind, unmade, of a greater power than man, waving in time.
The one grace of existence, the unmade shining through.
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And here are a couple pix anyway. What a little wonder. And no sign of hunger. :)
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Hello Doli
There are a few wells in my area that most never get to see, they are all out of the way of normal traffic. I like to look into these wells, the pull of the mystery I suppose, a little exploration to see what’s there. Some are shallow and are choked with sticks and fallen leaves. Others are deeper but still choked up. So I can’t do what I want to do and toss a pebble in to hear what sound it makes when it hits bottom, there’d be no point.
There is another well but it has long been behind locked gates and I don’t climb like I used to, so I threw a stone over but there was no sound or echo came back. And I’m not so driven any more, focused – you could say, to risk breaking in to what is clearly closed to me.
But I never say never, so you never know … And there might be a well I haven’t found yet.
We have just passed the shortest day here in the southern hemisphere, winter. Not much in the field or garden, especially after such a wet year and cold month. Still, something shows up on an almost daily basis, as long as I look. A Doli fly, 5mm long and skittish.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Rescue! Rescue!
I am going to tell you a dream that many little boys have. Of floods, endless rain, everything drowning, and a friend comes to help. A reminder of another time.
He can’t remember being a child. And then he remembers being a child and looking into a mirror and seeing his mum in need of rescue, and he spent the rest of his life rescuing his mum – in some woman, a self perpetuating mechanism, it’s classic I’m sure.
‘This is the boy’s love of mother distorted in the pain of a child that couldn’t help his mum when he saw she needed it. And the boy lived a sad life, to say the least.’ Because he always found what he expected to find, he couldn’t help it – the imprint on the film in the projector frames the light.
And then she, some ‘woman’ from outside the projection, came one night and loved the pain out of the boy in a dream turning to a nightmare. It was the opposite or negation of a nightmare, to have love enter so. What a wonder that is. And when he was falling back into the nightmare she came again and called out Rescue!; a gentle call, and rescued him again.
This is what love does, it stops the pain, the nightmare, by invoking love – the willingness to give up the nightmarish projection. ‘So just love her man, it wasn’t her fault you couldn’t rescue her. Just love her. Whoever ‘she’ is.’
And only ‘she’ can stop it. And who is she? Only you know, and she is the one you’re with. And she is the one to come, to the rescue. ((:
Love is the rescue, the rescuer and the rescued.
And this little Potter Wasp lady warmed up on my finger and took a little honey to start the day with and flew away. ((:
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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The Texture and Colour of Life …
… in …
… the sweet peace of the black.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
There Is No Such Thing As ‘Just’ A Bee …
There is the magical messenger of the spiritual Earth, carrying the music of creation from flower to flower until the symphony is complete and the mind of Man is at peace.
And when will that be? Well, there is only one ‘real’ time. More real.
It comes down to what you give your attention to – first.
No ‘pop’ religion intended. ((:
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A nomad bee from a nearby field at sundown on a cloudy afternoon.
Little beauty, to me.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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The Mythical Bunyip Of Oz …
… of Aboriginal lore, or Koori as I believe they prefer to be called. Said to inhabit swamps, creeks, waterholes – anywhere there is water really. Apparently the native Australians held this entity or creature in awe and dread and could never tell the white man its form or character, though the white man tried to rationalise it no end – no way.
These are just one of its many forms and its character is represented in the colours of Aus, where life is there will be the Bunyip in some form and colour.
The spirit behind, the nature and teacher of man.
Well, now we know for sure one of its forms since I caught it on camera, two in fact, quick shots as it was a precarious position hanging over the railing. I would say it is the water spirit and reaches into the land of Aus the way blood permeates the body and its character is one commanding respect for the Earth but especially water in all its forms and functions as it is the basis for life emergent.
And woe-betide anyone who dares ignore its telling of lore – the fact and truth of life – through experience and negation.
Anyway, I found these two Bunyips beside a bridge in a local rainforest garden. They were just standing in the shadows of a darkening afternoon saying nothing in particular, hearing the colourful birds chattering their day’s events to each other before sleep, tasting the coming rain, feeling the wind on their faces. Clouds rolling in.
It was time to go.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Why, oh why?
… do I do what I do, walk in nature, photograph insects, teach relaxation/meditation and macro. For peace of mind is the short answer, I enjoy it.
Relaxation/meditation is the basis for actualising my potential, otherwise I am not doing my best. And if I don’t give of my best, one way or another, I lose it. It’s that simple.
To be in nature, which requires a certain love of nature, where there is nothing man made and where I have something to do that I enjoy, looking – seeing – hearing – smelling – ‘sensing’, is freedom from the world of stress and strain – the mind. Though it’s not ‘for’ anything but being (in) nature, my nature.
Insects are our cousins and are closer in nature to us than the flowers and minerals and so reflect our own nature more closely, and without the complication of emotion. This living reflection is intriguing to observe, since it is my own nature uncomplicated. The flowers are reflective of a deeper nature, a more origional nature.
Many who do it regard macro photography as an expression of the predator civilised, a hunt, and it is, for the hunter. But rather than a hunt I would call it a prayer, not in any ‘religious’ sense but in the sense that to be in nature and capture the image of the more exotic and beautiful creatures requires an increasing knowledge of self, since what they do and how they do it is invariably understandable in terms of self, and a corresponding absence of the ‘human’ in human nature – that incessant naming and emotional consideration that is considered ‘normal’ in our mad world and sets us apart and often against the beings and ways of the earth. The perfect fruit of this way is being, (in) my beautiful nature – because nature is beautiful.
It is a simple way of communing with the god made, and an effective methodical, or instinctive, means of leaving the man made out of it. Methodical means it can be learned. Instinctive means you already know it but may have forgotten it, by covering it over with what complicates.
It, being – nature, is the only real religion, really. :D
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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