Space Bugs
On parade … in their space suits.
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© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Beez …
… in the bush.
From the morning glory days, a male I think. Relishing a dose of nectar at the mouth of the mind altering flower.
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He took his time enjoying the liquid pleasure. A rare enough visitor, we being surrounded by desert dry gardens.
And more recently, a female I think. Taking a break from collecting pollen for the nest, there’s more to life than young.
And another break, or another bee, on my dry hand. Preening time, best to last a little longer in a wearing world.
Making the most of one native flower in the garden. It’s almost summer conditions here now, not yet though.
Another flower from the local bush, seeds collected and sown for the garden to give life to. She seems to enjoy it.
And all is well … naturally.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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The Company …
Long nosed weevil on the clothes peg basket. Held on tight with folded legs when I touched the plastic on approach for a shot.
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A common enough garden fly asleep – still need to be careful – at night on one of the less common flowers in the garden.
A bug of some kind, sap sucker, stopped on the young sunflower leaf for a while.
Green shield bug, another sap sucker, enjoying the abundance of nourishment in one part of the garden this sprinter.
Short nosed weevil making its way among the spring/winter plants.
Small orb weaver on a moldy old lemon – habitat – staked in the garden. Everything has its day.
Long legged weevils on an moldy old orange staked in the garden, making friends perhaps.
… of bugs.
Going about their daily business, our little cousins. In their often colourful and outlandish clothes, uniform (to the human eye) within their own tribe.
They often communicate with each other in passing, usually amongst their own kind.
Some do look almost gentle, why not. Others are spiky and dangerous.
Between them they are equipped to eat almost anything …
… a bit like people that way. Our insatiable nature.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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A Congregation …
… of beetles, doing whatever beetles do in a bunch.
An unusual gathering of beetles on this sandpaper fig tree, not doing much at all, that can be sensed …
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… the sense of being uncomplicated by self reflection, being a body, instinctively.
Humming on green … munching away on more green at the well of being. Life as a sandpaper fig tree beetle.
You can see why its called sandpaper fig tree, it feels like sandpaper.
The art nature is …
Mmmm …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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My Nature …
… instinctively. A small tree, it was almost out of leaves to eat. At first, undisturbed, they were without the orange display. Relaxed even.
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Once alarmed they just kept producing the orange, enough for it to drip. And their pointed ends, tipped with something else it seems.
Gotta get up close to this stuff, for the viewing pleasure. I didn’t taste it and couldn’t smell it. Maybe other creatures do and can.
It was difficult to find one separated, this one dripped onto itself. Making it less tasty? Who knows without trying it out, or observing.
Little beauty, right? Superb defense mechanism, I suspect, given the circumstances. Such things are proven over time, or discarded.
Walking about the local bush I came across an unusual sight. These are larva similar to that seen alongside the sawfly of a recent post. They have in common their appearance and this raising of their pointy rear end when alarmed but otherwise are of a different kind.
When I touched the stem they were congregating on they raised their rear ends, some quickly blew out that orange liquid and a few just dropped to the ground. I can’t imagine many would-be diners would find their appearance appetizing.
All get defensive, some go passive and some get aggressive, or have the appearance of that. Not unlike people under threat. But unlike ‘many’ people they (mostly) don’t give me any sense of a capacity for self reflection …
… the prerequisite to ‘self improvement’, which, after all is done and been, must end in the simplification of being, because everything else (being identified with any thing that dies, and every thing dies) hurts, eventually.
That is not to say there is no animal, big or small, that doesn’t have it – self reflection. It’s a wonderful earth and such a wonder wouldn’t be out of place here …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Signs Of Life
This young spotted katydid is about 15mm long, tail to nose.
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It is probably a member of a brood currently foraging and surviving in the garden.
They have to be careful of the many spiders taking advantage of the boon of winter wildlife, with their webs cast about.
The shieldbug is doing much the same though differently.
Each kind of creature has it’s own ways of doing things.
Nearly all of them come to the flowers at some point in their lives.
It’s been consistently warmer recently and life as the small creatures is presenting around the garden. It behoves me to get a few pictures as they do, because they are just passing, as am I.
They are only images of signs of life that occur in sense and resolve to sensation. Out of sensation form arises, or re-arises, and falls or dies again. Life cycles here, endlessly.
And behind that is what doesn’t cycle, doesn’t change and always is … What does sensation arise from … nobody knows, the unknowable formless space.
Let go of everything else, form, and there it is, or isn’t … is, isn’t …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Flower Attack
Milling about the flower that feeds them, ants gravitate to the available nourishment, their need.
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Daisy of a kind on a sea of colour in the garden. A busy place for creatures of a size.
Nicotiana, the perfect flower of the – poisonous to some – tobacco plant.
Come to me, carefully, or feel my deadly kiss pierce the heart – or finger – of you.
Aromatic lavender, a little bit of heaven. Bee in the love of love, it’s a pleasure.
The gravity of a flower is its nectar, to the smaller bodies that are attracted, until the gravity or attraction changes …
Much like the things that come and go in our lives over time, people, situations and things …
The planets about the sun, the moons about the planets, the comets that burn in our sky.
Earth dust to starshine, we (I) pass this way.
Who am I?
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Times Past …
Forms come and go …
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In plain sight … these grasshoppers have the ability to take on their background colours.
An ancient creature … life in another time and place.
Just passin through …
Sandpaper fig tree beetle … in perfect shape for a warm winter.
And mis-shapen … was struggling to make its way. Such is life in some form.
This creature patrols the plant until it locks on and becomes …
… this. Its shell hardens and it changes form inside over time until it emerges as …
… this. The familiar ladybug has many useful functions in the garden. Then it turns into something else …
… form comes and goes.
To dream and dream again …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Winter Colour
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Jewel bugs, overwintering in the local bush regeneration that buried the bees nest sites, posing with some reluctance – the shot still has to be made in the seconds available.
It’s a wonderful warm and occasionally wet winter here and everything is getting a head start on spring.
Life is burgeoning, even got a few pear tree seedlings – pips from the cores – going on the deck.
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Whereupon I dreamt a most peculiar dream …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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