Moth To A Flame
She came attracted by the smell of fermenting fruit. Fruit surplus to my requirements, put to good use in the garden. Not unusual in Eden, the trouble free place natural a garden is.
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The skin of a pawpaw is tough, softened at the edge of collapse, as the fruit loses its firmness, radiating out from a point. So she can insert her 2 inch long proboscis deep inside, to the cool luscious heart of it.
For the nourishment that is her natural right, she may get giddy at first with delight, or flap with no intent, wings ablur. Going nowhere fast, not just outside, still and holding to the goodness inside.
She wasn’t giving up, this angel of night, attracted to the light of … well you know, the calling home. It’s the same light for us all, down into the blackness of night, inside.
Her matching colour and spots are no accident, everything fitting in a way the rational can’t divine. And the divine doesn’t surrender … in the end the rational must surrender to the divine.
Pawpaw staked in the garden for the little ones to party on, those about in the cold cold winter.
She was the first visitor, and came again nightly for a while, until her time was up.
Everything has it’s time, until its time is up.
Everything is right on time.
Or the timer is off.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Emerald Winter
Inside jet black eyes, looking with a will … what doesn’t need repeating any more, negated by the way.
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Jewel wasp, wandering the power pole in search of something unseen, or nothing … energetically apprehended.
On the sunny side of the 2 foot wide pole and she didn’t mind my shadow over her as she cast about, and still.
A little beauty with big shiny black eyes, metallic blue body armour and perfect wings to carry her as needs be.
A little green for show or decoration, long stiff hairs to keep the smaller creatures at bay. Perfect in every way.
What could she be after, out under the sky on a bare wooden landscape that offers little in the way of shelter.
Material perhaps, or for where she laid her eggs, or another’s. A simpler nature. No self reflection to complicate.
Emerald or jewel wasp, exploring the power pole for I don’t know what. It was a job keeping up with her.
Winter time here in Oz but the sun still shines most days. Some days with towering white clouds above, drifting slowly.
The wind blowing in from the sea can be cold, but that’s relative. A little work in the garden soon alters the outlook.
It’s a pleasure all round, in the simple sense of things.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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A Winters Feast
They prefer red meat but a little honey on a cold winters day is manna to a green head ant.
Still moving fast despite the cold, built to survive Australia’s relative extremes of weather.
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Once they came they came en mass, each a job to do lapping up the bounty.
No infighting amongst their kind, just a gathering of like minds for a single purpose.
If you wait long enough at a strategic position some will align so everything’s in focus.
Focus is everything, if you don’t have it you don’t have the object of it. Inside or out.
Come to drink at the rivers of light golden honey. If only for a short while, before the sun goes down.
Getting expressive, but nothing like they do when on a piece of red meat. Each to their own.
And when the feast is over the nocturnal ant comes along for the remains of the day. … Every little place on this earth has an occupant to fit.
To wake a green head ant tap the roof of his nest, he’ll come running. And no matter what he finds he will only seek out the transgressor of the peace. Not unlike us people, whether the source is inside or out, we seek peace, even through war – I know, I know.
So when these ants came pouring out of the nest they didn’t take much notice of the honey trap I had left for them, but they could be seen registering it. Left to slow them down enough for a few shots. When all the flowers are gone and it’s too cold for most small creatures to come out it’s time to innovate.
At first the tactic seemed to fail, they darted about looking for any foe and then retreated to the nest when they didn’t find one. And god help any they would find, that sting … But the message had gone into the nest, ‘there’s free honey out there guys’.
And so, after the aggressive defence had died down they came back out to feast.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Dandelion Life
You can see a dandelion, fruit of the earth, in sense.
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You can try smell it but it’ll probably get up your nose.
You can blow on it and seeds will take off into the air.
That’s sense of earth, with not a single thought in it.
The plant rises from the seed.
The flower from the plant.
The seed from the flower.
The wind takes the seed.
The seed goes to earth.
In rain and shine.
Light and dark.
All is fine.
In sense.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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A Few Flowers …
… and their lovers.
Big bad leopard beetle loving the strawflower early in the morning. No sign of trouble. … Hmm, pollen of gods.
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Some kind of wasp loving the sunflower. … Somewhere to wait out the wind, grab a bite and survey the landscape.
Shield bug loving the butterfly bush flowers, sitting in the sun, bouncing in the breeze. … Not a worry in the world.
Flowers need a bit of loving.
Love the flowers … or else.
Or else they’ll die.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Cold Bee
Small bee, or wasp, enjoying the regurgitation of some nectar, or something else. In and out, in …
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… and out … Sitting out the passing clouds on a cold winter’s day as she savoured this tasty drop.
Ready then to set off into the wild green garden, no thought for any future.
Sense is too good, to a bee and me, to spoil it with thinking.
There’s a cold wind off the sea that reaches inland and chills the garden.
The small creatures feel it, especially when the sun goes in.
But then the sun comes out again.
What a life …
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Lemony Life
The more common kind of weevil visiting the decaying lemon. A female I believe, sitting unusually tall but with thin front legs.
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I often observe her with her rear end touching the lemon’s surface. Depositing eggs I think. The lemon serves a multitude it seems.
That would make sense. Also, a weighty rear end is economically supported on the ground, and keeps the head up and alert.
Here she’s grazing. Then she makes the perfect subject, too absorbed to notice any disturbance I make in her landscape.
Then there’s mating, and those long male legs come in handy to maintain position and balance on an otherwise precarious lemony world.
An other kind of weevil, or babies frolicking on a young lemony world. It’s hard to say without interfering …
Where the lemon attached to the tree a fungus grows from within, and he loves it. … Notice his long legs now, broad at front, apparently oversized.
When the lemons in the house start turning I put them to use in the garden.
Staked on bamboo or otherwise, they age in the sun and rain and eventually attract these tiny weevils.
They graze on the cracking skin and any fungus or mold that grows on it, absorbed in the business of survival.
When they stop still it’s usually for a time, time enough to observe and for a few shots anyway.
But once they are on the move there is no hope, fast and agile as any fly in the garden.
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It’s in the nature of form to move. Trick is to be still enough to catch it before it’s gone.
Though it’s essence never really leaves, nature returns anew, is never the same again.
When seen with a steady focus, to be imbued with the creative spark of life.
Click – Life On A Lemon – for the original.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Ancestral
Come into my arms … said the spider to the … bee, or whatever edible unlucky enough to come along.
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Such a lovely coloured flower … will give pollen to fortify and nectar to speed you on your way. … Spider’s gotta eat too.
A magnificent beast … free of any impatience, or willfulness … simply waiting with a sense of being, hungry or to reproduce …
And every now and then she gets up and wanders around her home in the mauve flowering. Being what she is, seeing what she sees.
Always with a touch to her early warning system, trip threads. … A flower, wonderful little home for a crab spider.
This crab spider has family all over this land, little clones of each other, appearing to my un-spider eyes.
After the struggle to survive the summer they are now mature at this time of year and take advantage of the native flowering.
Also called flower spiders, because they make great bases from which to attract a mate and feed, sitting waiting for an unlucky bee.
Ambush preying is a way of life for these little forms of life, they can’t help it, it’s their nature, instinctively.
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We do it too, prey, ambush, for some personal advantage perceived. Calculated … Instinctive nature made self conscious.
We people are lucky though, you could say, having potential to see beyond the instinctive.
Through the self made conscious. To the divine … or to divine purpose.
But purpose is not for the herd, an other instinctive manifestation.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Plague Warrior
Sitting still a while, scoping out her territory. Danger as well as opportunity presents.
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Her favourite diet is ant, large black ones that climb endlessly up and down the power pole.
Alert to the shading of her by my rig, she inspects it from afar – afar to a 1cm long jumping spider.
She lives much of her life in the open on a 10m tall pole that was once a tree, in sunshine or shade.
Wherever the best chance of survival presents, there she’ll be. Chasing down her food, avoiding trouble as she can.
On the thick green power pole by the water treatment plant a warrior does live.
Her daily habit is to patrol up and down, for big ants to eat, while avoiding the tiny ones.
The big ants can be bitten but the small evade her and are tenacious when they get a grip.
She could see the tiny ones coming, in their rapid and erratic apparently aimless runaround.
And was careful to avoid them, jumping this way and that in her effort to stay ahead of trouble.
Trouble, what comes to everybody some time until we learn its nature and get ahead of it.
The natural things have advantage, they don’t confuse the fact with thinking or emotion.
Spiders don’t do it (think) instinctively, never consciously.
And the impossible is always a possibility.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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