Butterfly Ball
*Click the pictures, for the simple pleasure … then click (some) again.
The Caper Whites were the most numerous by far. It was their migration.
And so many other kinds showed up alongside them, like this Skipper, and others.
Jacaranda is raining across the country.
They came in their millions, these butterfly guys.
Dressed in white, red, blue and … on.
Dancing across the garden, supping as they went.
In waves, one week then two, they filled the air.
Some said it was an accident of the wind they came.
There was no food where they go. A terrible waste.
As with the Jacaranda flowering, right across the country.
I saw a dusting of the world by the magical, celebration earth.
It was east they danced and whirled, to the mystery.
Not west to the mapped mechanical.
There’s a world of difference.
Inside, that inner sense.
Of significance …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Cicada Day
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Having just left the car on my way into the bush I stopped to have a look at a nearby tree and out of the wind a cicada landed on me.
Opportunity, gotta make the most of it, some things only happen once and they’re gone.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Blue Butterfly Bush
*Click on the pictures … Butterflies added below, caught fresh.
And of course a few butterflies. One finally stopped still long enough, a few minutes ago.
It’s the season once more and the flowers are blooming in a wave across the garden. Leading is the butterfly bush.
And quickly following is a migration of white butterflies, a host drifting, fluttering east. Stopping only momentarily to fuel up and rest at day’s end in a dark corner of the garden.
This remarkable dance of nature has been going on for days now and I have only seen it once before. Symbolic, I think.
The blue flower has had many other visitors already, that I know of, some of which pictured here.
For the pleasure of it. Keeping it as simple as …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Time Flies …
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… so time for a few pictures.
The creatures are enjoying the garden. No threat, just the bounty of what is needed to live and die.
And no problem, each doing what it’s little mind dictates, instinctively.
But you can never rule out the impossible in a world of wonder.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Colours
Yellow Lynx on aromatic lavender against a blue sky. The sense of it …
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A rarity, the sun went in and this little beauty was caught out. Without the heat she had to sleep.
The garden Fly after the rain, perched safely for the night on a closed daisy.
Crucifix Beetle is back, after a few months absence. A little shy at first but soon settled for the shot.
Long legged Weevil, on lemon world with orange moon behind.
Click-beetle, big eyes to see with, for the darkness they are active in.
Blue white … the colour of mind with nothing in it, nothing to understand anyway – doesn’t give up easy.
The shifting forms of nature after a day in the garden, rising as vines untwine and blossoms unfold, but inside.
Then there are the creatures that live on them, the forms as shape and colour, sound and position, outside.
A delightful smorgasbord of sense, represented for the pleasure of it.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Fly By Nite
Keeping those legs clean. What they do in the dark.
*Click the pictures for a closer view.
A little dew from a cold night.
Sharing a perch for the night.
Neighbours by night.
Night time on the daisies, next to the nasturtium.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Dragon Salad
Mmmm, greens …
*Click the pictures to fill the screen with one, will look so much better.
Didn’t have the gear for a full body shot, about 50cm long, tip to tail.
Full head shot, including the ear on left, and armour behind it.
Eye spy, from 2 inches away. She didn’t mind, though I was ready to withdraw my hand the camera was first in line.
The other eye, left side, down where the turkeys went.
Ear armour, not to be taken lightly by a would-be attacker – dogs for instance, or turkeys.
Belly armour, from the side.
Belly armour from above.
Hind leg, she is well protected.
Manicure madam? Where we get our sci-fi creatures from …
Tip of the tail, modular structure, dispensable.
My eye was on the two bush turkeys running ahead, disturbed by my approaching form. So I nearly missed the dragon sitting motionless at my feet.
The afternoon sun was hot at my back and the area sheltered by trees from any wind, great spot for a cold blooded animal to warm up.
She sat on the dry track, still and unmoved – not a flicker of recognition I was there – with a little greenery hanging out her mouth.
We are just moving into late spring/early summer proper and the cold creatures are waking up to a new year.
The season is picking up a pace, though still cool enough from winter’s recess to enjoy the contrast.
One of the simple pleasures of being alive in nature, the sense of it, in the space of it.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Pollinators Past
More than a pollinator of flowers or crops.
*Click the pictures for a better view.
See the colour, the form, and wonder …
… are they just elements to be killed or harnessed?
Or is it clear these magnificent beauties are representative of something purer, unseen …
… of our own wonderful mystical nature that defies reducing.
They frolic in the flower heads … pollen dripping from their mouths.
Sit out the rain on a big yellow pillow.
Climb around the butterfly bush looking for the tastiest morsel.
Flit from flower to flower, playing in the garden.
The colours, this neon fiddler beetle.
Where better than on a crucifix orchid to pray in the dark of the night.
She traversed the garden, flower to flower, looking for the best spot to hatch her young. Pollinating as she went.
I’ve been asked to link to a calendar event about pollinators.
It’s not really what I’m about here but everybody needs to do something and any acknowledgement of nature is better than a lot else, closer to the earth.
So I’ll add my small piece to the picture. To call them pollinators is to reduce them to a function they perform in nature. It’s rational, scientific, but they are much more than that, to me.
To me the primary value of nature (insect pollinators in this case) is as a reminder of something else, through sense. Because when you’re under the hammer of mind as rampant thinking or the dreadful emotions it usually ends up stirring it is sense that helps you out for good – no undesirable (side) effects.
Sense as I see it, outside the world of mind-made problems, is a spiritual element of being in that, properly acknowledged, it can help resolve the problem of mind by nothing more than focus of attention, and right action, that may lead to realisation of something greater.
Any endeavour that omits the spiritual element and value, of sense and the realisable power or space within which a thought or planet occur – not religion, please – is doomed to be repeated.
Enjoy the pollinators for what they are … wonderful little earth creatures, faeries down the bottom of the garden … while they are.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Dark Jewels
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One jewel from last year and one from this, so far.
The rain has begun and it looks like we will get our normal wet weather season this year, monsoon.
It’s already showing in the phenomenal growth in the garden, everything is just reaching for the sky and it’s a pleasure to see and be in it.
Lovely weather too, cool breeze in the warm morning sunshine. Refreshing rain at intervals, not too far apart or too much at once.
Nice and steady … as steady can be in an ever moving world.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Nature's Place 
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