Ghost
Mantis smiling …
It’s whatever haunts …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on the picture for a closer look … and click again.
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Darkness …
Life forms in the darkness, shape, colour and light, and its nature. Something arising …
… the canvas upon which all is wrought, something arises.
Elegant butterfly, resting on a dried passion-fruit tendril.
Nature makes use of everything, no such thing as waste.
Even in the affairs of Man everything serves the whole.
And is seen to serve, in the process of negating …
… whatever arises inside.
Until nothing does.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on the picture for a closer look
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A Flower …
Small wasp feeding on the pokeweed flowers found growing wild in the bush.
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Blue billygoat weed for background. Another food crop for the little ones when much else is dormant.
The plant, ink/pokeweed, is said to be poisonous and it probably is, I haven’t tried it, and probably won’t.
Though I have tasted the dark ripe berry, where I got my seeds, and dried them in the sun. Before I knew.
It’s what children do with luscious dark red berries, though a ‘natural’ caution kept it to a taste, not a meal. … With a bit of luck I’ll have my own pokeweed plants flowering around the garden soon enough.
… by another name. Pokeweed, or inkweed, and others. It depends on who is telling.
I like it for the fact it flowers when most other plants are not, it feeds the little ones.
In spite of it being poisonous to people who don’t know how to use it, or use it properly.
Everything has its place and this flower will be growing in the garden soon enough, with some luck.
The seeds are in the fridge for a while to come and then we’ll see what may be.
The garden calls out ‘yes’. And nature will have its way, within beauty being.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Flowers Above
It’s just past mid winter here and I didn’t expect to see this half inch crab spider on the lavender buds.
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She takes up position on the flowering tip and stretches out her ‘arms’ waiting for a visitor to come.
Her vision may not be great, she opens her arms wide to the touch of my lens on the stem beneath her.
And begins waving her arms, perhaps as a warning or a way of appearing bigger than she really is.
It’s a common enough strategy, even amongst people who have taken it past the physically desirable.
To the emotionally or notionally deluded. But of course spiders don’t build psychic constructs of want.
They act purely instinctively in preservation of the organism. No self reflection or intellectualizing here. No thinking self.
Probably not the same crab or flower spider as last year, but she sure looks like a close relative.
Flower spider because they hang around blooming flowers to see what they can catch to eat.
No sign of her prey this time, there’ll probably be others this year, dropping into the garden.
Since she is almost fully grown she probably lived up in the nearby flowering trees.
Then sensed aromatic colour in the garden and dropped in for a look-see.
Now she’s gone … to pastures new, or tidbit to a passing bird.
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A spider’s lot. To live and die a spider. How simple that is.
Free to be everything spider is, no complications.
Of mind, minding things that don’t matter.
To a spider being …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Bee
Rescued from the water, still a little wet. Breathing fine, antennae intact, tongue working. Where there’s life form functions.
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Grooming and preening, the better to do its ordinary job … of entertaining the people of earth.
A bit of a climb at times, a zigzag incline – where life reflects on self. 1 2 3, 1 2 3 …
Two steps forward. one step back … nature’s waltz, 1 2 3, 1 2 3 …
Getting on with its ordinary life, of being a bee.
Mostly gathering goodness for the hive, with an occasional hiccup.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Signs …
Tiny spider surviving the winter hunting on the long lasting strawflower.
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No doubt he will migrate if food becomes scarce and hunger grips.
It just makes sense … surveying his tiny domain.
An even smaller wasp becomes food for the tiny spider.
Enough sustenance to keep body together for a while.
Such is life in form on planet earth.
… of life.
One creature from the garden, after nothing much for months.
Giving a sense of the coming spring.
Thank you spider … and wasp.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Watersun
Ladybug. Biding its time on a leaf in the sun.
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Stingless bee, about 12mm long. Investigating a bit of banana left for the birds.
Green shield bug, enjoying the sap of the plant the little wasps eat at.
The little wasp, feeding on the few remaining flowers of the valley.
Not afraid to investigate the new terrain.
Is it a bee, is it a wasp … It’s a beauty.
We’ve had plenty of both, sun and water, but not many visitors to the garden this warm winter.
It could be related to what’s been reported around the world, the disappearing insect populations.
Or it could be local, the use of indiscriminate insecticides on mozzie breeding grounds not far away.
Though the mozzies didn’t die out this year, a sign of something else perhaps.
They just love it here? :-)
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Another Time
Green Head Ant, from recent times. Grooming himself in the warm sun.
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Wasp on a cold afternoon, enjoying the pollen and nectar of late blooming flowers.
Honey bee, recovering from its swim on a cold winter’s day. Resilient little creatures.
When time stands still, and all that’s gone would live again, don’t look back. Life is the other way, and no way – the way of no.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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