Nature's Place

Back in the sixties when flower power was at its height I wondered what it actually meant besides being just a signature slogan of a subculture.

Now I know. The power of a flower is to reflect to me the world from whence it comes. A world of light and beauty behind this one where nothing dies. It reminds me from whence I come.

But only if I can truly listen. And I can only do that when the noise of mind is absent.

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Drugs gave us an apparently miraculous shortcut to heaven but, as anyone who has taken them and is reading this knows, there was and is a terrible price to be paid in arrears. Just look at the aftermath.
 
Copyright Reserved / Mark Berkery
 

 
Billinudgel NR is almost open to walk in again, just two tracks still under water. For now. And no mozzies to bother me, significant that.

The NR runs right down to the beach at Wooyung which is where I went in from today. It’s a lovely meandering walk twisting this way and that so I can’t really see what’s coming up round the bend till I get to it. I enjoy that, the unfoldment of the trail, one bend at a time.

Expectation, knowing, takes the mystery out of it. And the trail without mystery is mere mechanics.
 

There are a number of pools on the track as wide as it in places and ruts, sand and mud. It is lined with all sorts of plants and flowers, wild ones. And really rough in places, pleasing to me. Natureful.

A ways in on the right is the old sand mine which is now a big hole in the ground filled with water and alive with plants and animals, lizards, birds, snakes and things. Though it is still too cold for much activity the birds are ever visible in their search for food. Tis a delight to watch the little ones when they get close enough to discern the action, seeking out the tiny creatures they often survive on.

Further on I turned right into a field of reeds, a boggy area with wallaby tracks criss-crossing it. I had to step carefully in places not to sink in the sodden soil, mud and peat. An open expanse of reeds and grass tufts bordered by trees of all kinds, the Aussie kind.

This is where I found the Violet, if that’s the right name. So far I have only found it in the one place, shaded and off the beaten track. You have to really look to find some of the flowers pictured here. They are often so small and quiet – is the word – and hidden, they are easy to overlook.
 
In another place I came across a bee reveling in a big yellow flower. I have never seen a bee spend so much time in one place. It went busily round and round the cluster of stamen and seemed to be just tucking in with wild abandon, oblivious to the observer. Scrambling, bumbling. Feasting in the afternoon sun.

Pollen, or honey heaven to a bee.

Another bee came along and tried to push his way into the flower but the first wasn’t having it. There was an exchange of loud buzzing and a bit of pushing until the newcomer buzzed off to another flower. It must have been a good one, flower that is.

It was delightful to see the vigorous engagement of the bee with the flower. Almost making love, you might say. Bees love flowers, especially fresh ones.
 

Later, as the sun was going down, I was returning home along the same trail and noticed a few small flowers I haven’t seen before. With a few tiny visitors, invisible to the unaided eye – mine anyway. The light was low enough to need the flash to capture the image.

All things have their place, an integrity that serves in the particular which serves the whole. Sometimes a little science enables a clearer, sharper reflection.

And balance is preserved no matter what.
 
Copyright Reserved / Mark Berkery
 

 
It has been dry for a while and the track into the forest was dusty. A very fine sandy coloured dust that rose in a cloud in the wake of the car.

I haven’t been to Mooball NP for a while and it was pleasant to be there. Sun streaming through tall gum trees, broad leaves of fern and palm and others fluttering in the mountain breeze, birds calling in the dark of the woods.

Not many insects, it has been cold for a while. But some plants are putting out flowers anyway. Nature knows best.

It was nice walking along the trails. Just me, the forest and its inhabitants. Not another person in sight or earshot. Quiet of mind. Silence? Sense.

Some things had changed, there were rocks on the track as if they had been falling from the steep hillsides and the slasher had been through recently clearing the firebreak trails.

There was some sign of the dry cold in the desiccated toad I found but the forest is well, you can see it. A clarity in the psyche.

I took it easy going up the steep trails. Taking time to look at the growth alongside. It takes time for the particular in nature to properly register so it’s important to be at ease and not in a hurry, giving attention. It is good to be at ease.

Some of the flowers are so small and blend with their background, or so it seems. Their gift is only for the relaxed of eye, the quiet of mind. Too quick and you miss them for they are not many or loud.
 
Copyright Reserved / Mark Berkery
 

 
It is a pleasure for me to observe the forms of nature, the bugs and flowers, and everything else. In the particular and the sense of the whole. What happens in that world, my world – for it is my nature as it is anyone’s who acknowledges it, is often a reflection of my own self.

Often I will see in nature the wisdom I already know but unclouded by any mind, just a clear reflection that is all too easy to overlook.
 
The way it works is simple. All existence is a reflection of my own inner life. All existence is what I can sense now, anything else is in the mind.

The light of intelligence I am behind shines out through the purer impersonal psyche where nature’s reality is and on the way picks up the one sense of it for projection through the body, the senses, as the Earth. Nature takes form.

On the way, closer to existence, it (or I, the light I am) also passes through the personal psyche, with its varying degrees of emotional conditioning and factual experience, and picks up the sense of it for projection into existence as the world on the Earth and my circumstances or situation in it. Mind takes form too.

Whether or what I see in the sense of it all depends very much on how still I can be inside, still of mind. For it is only the movement of mind that clouds the reflection.

A clear reflection depends on a still mind.

 
When the mind of emotion and thinking is still it is possible to see nature as it is, the fact of it. Or the world for that matter.

When I can see the fact of it without the distortion of mind there is a possibility of seeing the reality behind. Emotion gives rise to distortion. Fact gives way to reality.

When I have practiced seeing the fact of nature enough I see through the fact to the reality of the beauty of it. Nature is beauty.

When I reflect on the beauty of nature enough I begin to resonate inside at the frequency of the beauty the intelligence of nature is and I am that. I return to my true nature. Or truer, more real nature.
 
What I acknowledge this way returns as my existence. Troublesome mind and world or beautiful nature and world in its place.

Acknowledgment is not thinking about it, not getting emotional about it. It is being reflecting on the sense of it. Whatever it is.

It all depends on what I acknowledge. I do it. I make my life what it is. Or I don’t do it and I still make my life what it is. So might as well do it?
 
Acknowledgment of the simple sense of good nature is doesn’t just happen. It is done. Then you’ll see what happens.
 
Copyright Reserved / Mark Berkery
 

 

 
Don’t get too close to an active bee hive.

I went there again today to see if I could get a better shot of them coming in to land. I tried different settings on the camera and got a few reasonably good ones.

But. I was close to the ground and out of the flight path but one bee took exception to my presence. Maybe it was the flash that disturbed or attracted it but it came at me with a will. A will to see me off. Which it did.

I waved it away with my hand and then my hat and thought it had given up when I was ten metres away from the hive but it came at me again, and again. The third time it landed on my arm and tried to sting me.

It did but I got to the stinger in time to pull it out before too much toxin was injected. I remember seeing somewhere the stinger continues to pump toxin after it has been ripped from the bee and my body’s reaction was instant.
 

 
A little information from a long time ago helped a lot when it was needed, amazing body – brain. Survival instinct utilising information from ages ago in an instant to mitigate a dangerous situation. Wasn’t I lucky, and quick.

Lucky it was only the one bee. And the natural intelligence of the body – brain was the quick, sense – ibly so.
 
 
 
 
 
Copyright Reserved / Mark Berkery
 

 
I can walk again in the nearby Billinudgel NR. It’s a swamp really that has been impassable in many places for a long time now with all the rain, but the cold has killed off most of the mozzies. And those there are don’t seem to have the strength for biting too much.

I discovered a bee hive today and thought ‘what an opportunity’ until one blundered into the back of my neck. I swished it away and ran for cover just in case he was focused on me. He wasn’t and a few seconds later I went back but stayed out of the flight path this time, close to the ground and to the side, live and learn – once more.

It was getting late, the sun was high and the entrance to the hive was on the shaded side of a dead tree trunk so the camera wasn’t able to get the action very well. I took many pix but only one was any good. I might go there early some morning to catch them coming out.

Most of my photographic subjects are from the plot of land where I live in Wooyung. And though the flowers are of what is generally considered a weed and often very small, they are beautiful.
 
Beauty, the re – cognizance of a place inside, in the psyche, manifests as the nature all around me. I only have to look and taking photo’s is one way of doing it, a good way to acknowledge that which is without the considerations of mind – the so called worldly stuff.

The effect of this over time is the worldly stuff fades to its proper perspective. As something to be attended to as a matter of fact, as needs be. While the nature, the beauty of it, fills the space left by the diminishing stuff of mind.

It has to be done to be appreciated. Done to be realised. The flip side is what stuff of mind that lingers has to be let go and often it doesn’t want to go since it is in, or is, the habit of repeating itself. So perseverance is required. And right action.
 
Not unlike the way a seed perseveres on its journey to the light. It first needs to sense the potential of life as water or it won’t even begin. Then it has to break out of its usually hard shell and spread its first leaves to the light to get the energy to grow roots to take sustenance from the earth to support its growing body. One thing at a time.

It’s a balancing act, one action sustaining the other. Too much reaching for the light and it lacks the strength of stem and root to reach on with any reliability. Too much root will die back for lack of light coming through the leaves. Each unbalancing causing its own particular problems.

Thankfully nature usually takes care of the balancing act. The only place it can really be disturbed is in man as he is now, often focused in the emotional and mental, where energy can be unnecessarily lost to the condition of mind. Energy that is needed for the balancing.

Only man is unbalanced because we have largely left nature out of our lives as a conscious acknowledgment – not knowing what we are doing.

The beauty of it is no matter how unbalanced we get it is possible to return to equilibrium – knowing what we are doing.

There is no perfection here, only the best I can do. Which, by doing it, can get better.
 
Copyright Reserved / Mark Berkery
 

 
So many songs about it, and it’s true. It aint! But it can be simple. When the complication of mind is left behind. Left behind as something taken too seriously.

That’s what this blog is all about. But it’s only a blog, remote, not personal enough to make any real difference to anyone but me. And not enough to me, in the end!

Not to diminish the value of it. It has and does serve me well, as an acknowledgment of the simple. Acknowledgment is what I give my time and energy to. Acknowledgment counts. But it has to be lived as well.
 
The pictures are all weeds from the garden. Weeds and the beautiful little creatures that love them. And one that loves the little creatures, enough to eat!

Apparently it is not popular to portray the beauty of weeds. Why? I suspect if weeds became known for their beauty we would have to change our ways and our perception and appreciation of much else besides.

But that’s another story. Or is it?
 
This one is as simple as you see. The colour, the sense, the wonder and awe at the magnificence of the creation in ‘all’ it’s beauty.

What does that say about the creator? A light? The light from which all light shines? Beauty? Doesn’t do it does it? Not without a knowledge of the reality behind.

The light behind. Beyond words to describe but not beyond seeing, knowing, being inside.

If you see or are touched by the beauty or wonder in anything you see or otherwise sense that’s it, or the beginning of it.

It, the magnificent, the unspeakable. I’ll have to stop there for now.
 
Copyright Reserved / Mark Berkery
 

 
The wind changed yesterday. Instead of a cold southerly the wind now comes from the north and it is warm again, being in the southern hemisphere. It was so sudden and dramatic the condensation is still dripping off the cold metal water tanks a day later.

The frogs are pleased. Everywhere about the house there are frogs sitting, as frogs do. I have seen a dozen or so tonight and they are looking a bit thin, a bit bony, after the cold spell. I wonder if they eat mince meat?

They eat tuna, I’ve seen one climbing out of the cat’s bowl with a big grin on his face. Do frogs grin?
 
The occasional large moth has come fluttering about the light outside and it is nice to have a pic of one in the nearby tree, its natural habitat, lovely colour and form.

At first it tried to land on the bulb but found no foothold and fell, fell and fell again until it settled on the wooden beam just above. I got a few close ups of it stationary but they don’t match the couple I got of it scrambling up the tree branch. And then it disappeared into the night where I couldn’t follow.
 
I haven’t mown the grass for a while and it is getting long in places. Back of the house mostly for some reason, where there are most dandelions. It’s more sheltered there. These sunny yellow dandelions are the biggest attraction for the insects at the moment so I won’t be mowing the grass for a while yet.

There are pockets of dandelions and daisies about the garden where the bees and hoverfly’s feed. And other small flowering plants – weeds to some. And creatures such as tiny wasps and fly’s. It really is amazing what is seen through the macro and close up lens. Or just when I look – with my looking glasses on.
 
The bees are very fast feeding at the flower, in and out mostly. Sometimes they vigorously investigate the flower to be sure they have everything to be had at that time. Though they usually look as if they are in a hurry – to serve the hive I reckon.

It’s their instinct, programming, to get as much as possible as quickly as possible and get back home. Real busy worker bees.

The hoverfly’s are more sedate but fewer in number. It requires some persistence to get a good photo of either. And planning.

To plan I usually select a flower likely to attract a bee, let’s say, one just come to full bloom is best – freshest.

I position for the shot with consideration for the angle of shot and the direction of light/shadow and flight path – usually the same because the flower points to the sun so it is more visible to the bee from that direction.

I establish working distance for the magnification to be used and sometimes lock focus and perhaps exposure for the anticipated position and lighting of the subject. Working distance is the distance from the camera it is possible to get something in focus – fairly well defined with macro lenses.

If there are a lot of flowers it is difficult to plan – which flower to sit in wait at. It’s exhausting chasing bees around to get a photo – I tried, and mostly fruitless unless there are many bees. I have since found it best to be economical with exertions. But you can be sitting for a long time before a subject comes along and under the right conditions and position.

But it happens, the extraordinary image is captured, even if only by luck – and patience and a little know how. I have seen a picture of a dragonfly in flight across open water and they are ‘fast’.
 
The wasp’s are back as well. Thoroughly searching up and down the back of the house for anything to eat, and maybe a future nest site – who knows? There must be a nest nearby. They are discernibly cognizant of my presence but as long as no threat is offered they are passive, though still guarded.

Occasionally one lands on or near the Passionfruit plant leaves where I can get a good look at – her? Maybe, I suspect most of these wasps are female since my only real experience of them is of a very successful nest tended by many mothers – I presume.

The one pictured was climbing about the greenery inspecting this spot and that and finally settled in a sheltered spot under a leaf, facing out to the world. It looked to me to be waiting in ambush for any unwary creature to come along – since such creature’s needs are simple and predictable. Or was it just resting in the green shade?

It kept an eye on me as I approached and backed into its shelter to signal I was close enough. Any closer and she would have taken action, like hide or fly away – or attack.

Intelligent little creatures all.
 
Copyright Reserved / Mark Berkery
 

Yes but….what….’s that hanging on to his…. finger? Oh no, not another epic battle mum!

A Green Tree Frog climbing a vertical post on his way to the light where there is an abundance of insects to eat. This shot was taken before the summer ended. The ant was probably too small for the frog to eat and the frog too big for the ant. I suspect they went their seperate ways soon after this shot was taken though those ants can be tenacious little fella’s without regard for the unsuitability of their prey.
 
Copyright Reserved / Mark Berkery