Royal Ant
She struggled in the water a while, head sinking below the surface just as I got to it.
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Fresh from the wet, still vigorous but drenched. Wings clinging with the weight of water.
One wing entangled, torn where her leg fits through it. Flying times are over little one.
At rest a while on the warm bamboo stick, time to recover her energy for the next effort.
A natural creature just keeps going as long as it has the energy, to perform its function, instinctively.
She’s beginning to feel the need for preening, to get the kinks or debris out of her form. Takes her time.
The head is first for cleaning, eyes and antennae, where the senses are primarily located.
And she’s off, exploring various locations for suitability of habitat to her potential offspring.
Or she’s just checking out her world, small as it is it is mighty big to her eyes. Would be to mine …
Relentless, until she finds what she’s looking for, what is right to her sense of things.
And time for pause … everybody needs pause in this fast, hard, hostile world.
A queen perhaps, of the green-head tribe, of which there are many colonies around the house.
Brought to ground, or water in this case, by the strong winds and rain that’s been passing lately.
Being winged she is on her way to birth another ant colony, chances are, workers of the hard soil.
It’s easy to tell where a colony is days after a little rain, where the grass is growing straight and strong and green.
They prep the ground with their nest site diggings, the way a gardener would to plant food and flowers.
Just one of the millions of creatures working the earth, that we would be poorer for their passing.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Bee Again …
Struggling mightily in the water in the pot plant tray, I lifted her out.
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It was late afternoon, so she had little time to recover and get on her way.
And she made an effort, nature never gives up before the end.
You have to admire the un-self-conscious tenacity. An indomitable will, albeit instinctive.
After a while I put her to the flowers, to enwrap and nourish her, if she was still able.
She explored a little, climbing about the petals, just finding her way.
And when it seemed too late for flight I put her to a already closing flower for the night …
I don’t know if a hive creature adapts to being alone for a night …
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Lazarus Bee
They just keep getting back up and recovering. Having a good cleanup before takeoff.
© Mark Berkery … Click on the picture for a closer look … and click again.
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Mitey Bee …
Found wandering among the new flower plantings.
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A little coaxing gets her up on the stick and relative safety.
What slows such a diligent worker down so? Exhaustion maybe …
A little calendula nectar works a treat to get her going again.
Possible problem coming into view, around the vulnerable neck.
And there it is, not an insignificant burden to a little bee.
And then she was gone, off on the wind.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Mantis
Recovered from the ground, having been knocked about in the watering. Time for a clean up.
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This restless slow moving fellow, I set him up on the calendula, didn’t seem to mind.
Occasionally stopping with a little colour and background for context, maneuvering for light.
Reaching out to climb on the lens.
Settled for a while.
Let us prey …
Spring has arrived in the southern hemisphere, my Brisbane anyway. Going by the small wildlife in the garden. Sun is up, enough, and the garden gets watered.
All winter we had mozzies and recently they disappeared, more or less. Probably that small plane circling overhead, dusting their nearby mangrove breeding grounds.
Otherwise life forms are burgeoning, sort of, with a few mid sized creatures who had matured elsewhere come visiting.
And then at night it all disappears into the darkness under the stars, and the waning moon.
The frog squeaks his pleasure in the damp dark forest, the garden is still.
Trials of summer heat yet to come. A different pleasure.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Ghost
Mantis smiling …
It’s whatever haunts …
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Darkness …
Life forms in the darkness, shape, colour and light, and its nature. Something arising …
… the canvas upon which all is wrought, something arises.
Elegant butterfly, resting on a dried passion-fruit tendril.
Nature makes use of everything, no such thing as waste.
Even in the affairs of Man everything serves the whole.
And is seen to serve, in the process of negating …
… whatever arises inside.
Until nothing does.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on the picture for a closer look
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A Flower …
Small wasp feeding on the pokeweed flowers found growing wild in the bush.
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Blue billygoat weed for background. Another food crop for the little ones when much else is dormant.
The plant, ink/pokeweed, is said to be poisonous and it probably is, I haven’t tried it, and probably won’t.
Though I have tasted the dark ripe berry, where I got my seeds, and dried them in the sun. Before I knew.
It’s what children do with luscious dark red berries, though a ‘natural’ caution kept it to a taste, not a meal. … With a bit of luck I’ll have my own pokeweed plants flowering around the garden soon enough.
… by another name. Pokeweed, or inkweed, and others. It depends on who is telling.
I like it for the fact it flowers when most other plants are not, it feeds the little ones.
In spite of it being poisonous to people who don’t know how to use it, or use it properly.
Everything has its place and this flower will be growing in the garden soon enough, with some luck.
The seeds are in the fridge for a while to come and then we’ll see what may be.
The garden calls out ‘yes’. And nature will have its way, within beauty being.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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Nature's Place 
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