Wasp
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For this little creature what it’s all about is being wasp, no self reflection to interfere or confuse that simple state of being.
For this writer what it’s all about is realising that original state of being, before (and after) self reflection.
And the way to do it is simple, after all is said and done (the need for experience), stop reflecting self.
By reflecting something else, or nothing at all. There is a way.
Not easy … but simple.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Times Passed
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Frisky little beetle, wouldn’t keep still. Flash of blue, all dressed in green. Places to go, things to do.
In between seasons here, some flowerings at winters end have been cultivated. But I can’t cultivate the mobile and flying creatures beyond providing food and habitat. Then they come or go by a will not mine.
Something of a reformation really, of constituent elements, viewed through a fresh perspective. Since time as past has passed. Nothing ever really repeats. It only looks that way to the eye jaded by familiarity.
Lucky we have the seasons to remind us, nothing stays the same for long. It takes a brightness of being – without thinking or emotion, the psychological self – to discriminate and appreciate.
So here’s some past come once more, in images taken then, not now. And we’ll see what happens next as the garden reaches into spring.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Forgotten …
… but not lost.
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And aesthetic appreciation … A designer indeed, if unformed and unnameable. … An intelligence that doesn’t bend to the rational mind.
The first fruit fly of its kind this year, laying into the pawpaw left out for the purpose.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Mice + Others

No, no mice here … Native stingless bees collecting resin from fresh cut pine trees at the meditation meetup place.
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Industrious little creatures, oblivious to the danger of this particular service to the hive. Deadly sticky building material.

Not here to socialise, collecting little bags of resin on their legs, where they would normally put pollen if collecting food.

Time enough for essential grooming, keeping those antennae in top condition, to ensure a safe return home perhaps.

A little overzealous maybe, or over-ambitious, grappling with a ball of resin too big and heavy to lift, bright enough to dazzle.

And then there’s the risk, the danger mentioned, of stepping on a watery patch and sinking in. A final service of life, to life.

What happens when you over-reach, if a little native bee. The early flow of resin too much to manage and under you go. That’s life …
We have a neighbour who built a chicken house then went away for two weeks with the chicken’s food on auto.
By the time he came back the rats from all around had moved in under his shed and had many babies.
These well fed babies grew up and crowded the original nest so they moved out, and moved in.
Into my place, well almost. And that’s when I got good at setting the rat traps.
Caught so many and relocated them to the remnant rainforest up the road.
But I never did enjoy this removals business, it was just a reflex action.
Something learned long ago, that rats need to be seriously dealt with.
Probably from plague times when rats were synonymous with death.
But it’s no longer so, they can be left alone to live their lives.
Old brain programs should be regularly updated.
Belief of any thing or one would be discarded.
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Oh right, the mice. Well, they turned up a few days ago and I caught a few in traps laid for the rats. So easy to catch for some reason. They are not very cunning creatures, one may have come back to the same trap three times in the same day. Or there are that many of them now, a plague perhaps.
Anyway, I couldn’t go on relocating the little creatures knowing the space they took would surely soon be taken by more of the same.
And their lives would be shattered for no good. So why utterly disrupt their little lives, for an out of date brain program.
It’s the sense of innocence about them that can’t be ignored. They can look after themselves, things will work out.
If they get into the house … that’s a separate matter.
Life goes on …
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Winter’s Life
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Weevil on the hunt for a little food. Mold will do, often seen harvesting some on the skin of decay.

Another nearby opportunist – aren’t we all – waiting its turn at advantage, or opportunity, to live on.

Some don’t live on. … That’s life too. … No doubt took advantage of opportunity when it could. … Now back to the bright black beauty.
Some of the life that makes its way to the decaying pawpaw fruit left out for any to take advantage from.
Advantage, an opportunity to do what life does, live again, with the purpose of maintaining the earth machine.
The machine of which we are all parts in service to the whole, on the surface of sense and behind in the invisible.
Invisible to whatever is tuned to seeing ‘things’, until it is detuned or retuned by letting go any ‘thing’ that arises.
… enough. That’s life, the power discerned by the process of negation.
The bright black beauty of no-thing behind it all.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Oops!

An eight legged spider, as all spiders are. … The strangest thing … not that this young huntsman was out in the dead of winter, roaming a lifeless indoor wall.
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And not in a hurry anywhere either, pausing frequently so I could get a few shots, but definitely going ‘somewhere’, but nowhere in particular. And then I see it.

Oops! How on earth did this happen, who or what would ever go anywhere, or nowhere, just to drop a leg? But it must have got caught up, and easier to let it go than fight for it.

And that’s what it did. But never mind, it will just grow a new one. If it can find enough to eat to survive long enough to grow it. … But no problem, just the fact of spider being.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Crucified Bug …
… on a crucifix orchid.
© Mark Berkery … Click on the picture for a closer look … and click again.
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Shielded Bugs
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These small creatures are the gardens only winter residents, shielded as they are. Even so, they do come and go.
There isn’t enough food to keep them fed so they have to move on to what may be coming ripe somewhere else.
Nomads, following the road least travelled, harvesting what’s available and moving on to pastures new.
No certainty in their little lives, just what needs doing. No past or future to distract from now.
And no matter the situation, they never give up. That’s not nature’s way.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Time’s Up …
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The pawpaw are too long on the tree to ripen properly so they go to the creatures of the garden, placed in strategic spots.
As time passes and the elements get to the fruit they begin to rot and ferment, at a rate relative to exposure.
Don’t want them all ripening at the same time, isn’t good for anyone, me or them.
And so I caught some revellers, blowing alcoholic bubbles, and falling about the place.
A honey bee must have gotten drunk and fallen into the liquid centre ringed with mold.
She didn’t make it back to the hive with her packet of pollen but made her contribution.
To the whole, for the greater good. Every little bit serves.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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