Nature's Place

Wolf spider, sitting exposed and undisturbed on an upturned shoe outside the back door.

*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again

As soon as the door was opened she made to enter but that can’t be. Her place is outside.

Frisky little beetle, wouldn’t keep still. Flash of blue, all dressed in green. Places to go, things to do.

Clean those wings, polish those antennae, test those muscles for impending flight. Off to the ball.

Plain green beetle also stepping out, exploring the multi-purpose stick I keep for the occasions.

Stepping out and stepping up … can’t keep a good green beetle down. Off into the wild green growth.

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.

*

*

… but not lost.

Winter is over and spring is on the way. Time for little ones …

*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again

And this little one is laying more little ones. Into the soft stem site on a fallen pawpaw.

Her unmistakeable actions set her apart, and she is solitary, not another of her kind about.

Intriguing little things, obviously designed with great consideration for functional detail.

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.

*

*

No, no mice here … Native stingless bees collecting resin from fresh cut pine trees at the meditation meetup place.

*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again

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.

*

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.

*

*

Pawpaw has been drying out in the winter sun and cold wind. … Fly paid a visit and sat a while.

*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again

Fly makes its home here, only found on decaying fruit in the garden. … Long legged fly dances.

Midge at rest nearby. Where there’s food the forms of life come in waves, to take advantage.

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.

*

*

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.

*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again

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.

*

*

… on a crucifix orchid.

© Mark Berkery … Click on the picture for a closer look … and click again.

*

*

*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again

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.

*

*

That’s life …

*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again

No sentiment in nature.

… and death.

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.

*

*