Nature's Place

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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Petals of Pearl

I’ve been seeding the garden with all sorts for a year or so, not knowing what may grow, and every now and then a little wonder appears through the overgrowth. This one has been budding for about a week and finally opened yesterday, some – half of the petals anyway. And today it opened up completely to the spring sunshine.

It’s a little beauty and I’ve been working it to see what happens, image-wise. That’s one of the things I love about nature and photography, I never know exactly how a shot is going to picture – there’s the shot and then there’s the picture produced. And I don’t want to know.

A wonderfully creative way to spend a few minutes, or hours, in sense. To see what a flower looks like and is. The creases and shadows on the white that give it its texture, the shape of the petals that give them their magical quality. And the yellow, heart of the flower, giving up to the prince of light – the Sun.

Yellow face I’ll call it, in a halo of pearly white.

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It doesn’t have to ‘make’ sense, only to be it.

Whatever that means.

Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge

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Ready or Not …

… Keep your place or you’ll be caught! It was a game we played as kids, hide and seek if I remember right. And I went on playing it for decades after, in one form or another.

Now I don’t play any more, because I’m not so inclined, and you’ll have to go back and close your eyes to count some more. That’s what the seeker used to do, count up to a number and shout out – Ready or Not …

Have you ever seen any bugs play this game? Of course it’s not the same, they don’t count, not like us anyway. But they do play, why not. Why would a living creature, however small, be excluded from play.

Just look at the design, the colours. So much ingenuity and no play, absurd. And when they are in action it can plainly be seen they enjoy life.

That’s what I see, it’s the way it is, until it is some other way.

Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge

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Perfectly Queen … of the Bees

It was a few weeks ago now that she showed up on the morning rounds of my little nature. There were still some of the little people/creatures to be found in the fields and woods as the winter, such as it is here, hadn’t yet taken a firm hold. Grass was still growing and leaves hadn’t fallen, not much of either. An in-between time you could say, not yet too cold for long enough to drive everything to death or shelter.

The field of long grasses was beginning to dry out with few of nature’s flowers, man’s weeds, still blooming here and there. Little yellow and red striped bells of beauty to me, shining here and there at the tops of the now yellowing threads of the earth’s summer blanket. Calling out to the remaining little people, come to me, here I am, just for you my love. Drink deep and live a little longer in my cold Elysian field.

And there, down the tracks of the season’s comings and goings, I saw a sign of wonder and mystery. A solitary queen, of queens, sitting in the shadows of the morning sun. Drinking the shine as it rose on the dew, warming to a new day to which there were now so few. My little queen, ‘tis you.

So I went to her, and with a passion new, tended her rising ‘til she had awoken true. From this way and that I saw she was fine and I, labouring in the rising sun, a little heady on just the scent of her wine. My, my, what a lovely so new. The form and the colours a blessing of Thine.

Then, inevitably she woke and I stood back to hear what she spoke. A tinkling sound to the ear of the round, a way of the listening, and the speaking, not often found. And what was it she said that touched me so, was it something you hear now that I can no longer know, or keep.

It’s that same sound, of the blackness, the silence so deep!

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

The Dreams of Bees

As the still bright sun goes down behind the clouds over the woods on a cold and windy day, a Blue Banded Bee gets ready for the long dark night through which he cannot fly away. For a while he comes and he goes but eventually to keep, he locks his jaws on the stem and that way goes to sleep.

And on the way he dreams of the things, of bees. While stretching his wings and kicking his legs he turns this way and that to indicate, he sees. The blue of a flower in bloom, a little nectar or pollen, a mate of his kind. Zooming in and out among the grasses and between the trees. God knows he will find.

Dreaming in imagery a thinker could never know, the things a bee is and does. Making his home near enough to his kind, making it on the go.

And all the while, he keeps his big eyes open for danger and, marvelously, knows no foe.

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She, in her clay nest looking over her brood, waiting to wake to the sun once more to do the dreams of bees, given the weather’s mood. To find a blue flower, some pollen and nectar, a mate perhaps, of her kind, a choiceless love that does not intrude.

She knows no time but what she does as the need presents in mind. Yes, bees have minds. Did you think you are the only ones, you and your kind?

And when they are done and dead, no one to mourn, the little ones fed, it happens o’er, never once knowing the ill of human dread.

Rise up little one, to the golden flight, though there be a little fright, Thou art a queen, of light.

Rise up, to know your right.

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Each bee new to the fact of being a bee, each flower a rare discovery, sipping the nectar of the earth can only be heavenly, to a new bee. And all the other things that happen anew in a bee’s busy day, you see.

Chased by a Dragon or Wasp or even a bird or three. Evading death a hundred ways, the wind no less a threat, when hungry, being as small a bee.

They have been cold and wet of late. Holding on for days and nights before they ate. To live and die as is their fate. And all to know a mate, a mate.

That’s their fate, and their faith, it’s never too late.

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And then I look up and what do I see, but the gods of the sub-continent aligned to a V. Sailing or running along on the wind, aflame, a-coloured, gloriously unhinged. What may be.

Was it me? With them or not, I can’t now see. A b… on the wing, I could equally be. ((:

What is this I have seen? The passage overhead, alongside, of fantastic creatures, warriors, a king and a queen. A wonderful procession of the characters of innocent mythical mind a keen.

Then to my rear I see the world, a-burning where there is no flame, consuming yellow arise from the earth, a perfect dissolution that knows no blame – it’s not you or me, no such fame.

This way or that, there was no escape, from these hard won laurels no man could possibly ape. T’was real enough, to me, all form agape.

The end I see, nothing to bemoan, but to set me free. The death of you and me, but no, not Thee.

Or was it just a dream after all, of bees, no more to be seen or fall? A dream, too few do recall.

No, t’was real enough to me, my friend. Know though, this is not the end.

For we meet in the wilderness, of mind, where thought would only offend.

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

Colour Me Wicked …

… colour me blue. An if dat don’ fit just colour me true. Cause if you don’t colour me I’ll have to colour you. Ooh, the ways of the world, and in colour too. ((:

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Colour, colour everywhere. Just reach out and touch it, smell it, feel it, taste it and see it – of course, awake to it. And have you got that other sense, inside, a certain sense of beauty, of colour.

What a wondrous form of life colour is.

The colours and structures of flowers are wonderful and sweet to the inner sense and though they are ‘known’ in the moment they don’t exist in isolation, they depend on insects for their  existence, mostly. And they are best shown in contrast to something … contrasting.

So when this bug showed up on one of my garden plants, in fact on a blade of grass in a hanging basket where I haven’t planted anything, sheltering from the wind and rain, I couldn’t help myself. I got the camera out and paraded her, it’s a her, from flower to flower to see where she was most at home and most beautiful.

Well, she loved the yellow, she couldn’t get enough of it, always reaching out for it when we were close enough but otherwise content to bask in the rays of coloured sense. A truly enlightening activity all round, delving into sense where there’s no place for ‘trouble’.

Then there was the white with a little yellow heart against the green. And she loved it too, obviously in communion with the different colours, just not in words, but sensewise – the wisdom of sense.

And when I brought her to the big yellow she was thoroughly uplifted, I’m sure I heard her laugh a laugh of  pure delight. Ha, ha, ha, loud, clear and uninhibited. I’m nearly sure. ((:

When we had enough of this playing she climbed off to tuck up under a leaf for the night, to sleep undisturbed.

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Delightfully colourfully I.

Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge