Bee Hotel …
This parasitic wasp was noticed sitting on the old Blue Banded Bee hotel, listening … for what may be.
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Listening … to what the surrounding structure and landscape was saying, the masked bee moved in.
Moving from entrance to entrance, each one separate as the BBB are a solitary bee, not hive minded – somewhat individual.
All can be seen to exercise caution, at least testing for recognition to ensure integrity to process – don’t want to finish another’s nest.
Others just testing for a suitable repository for her as yet unborn young. All things intelligent in their own ways, all things driven to reproduce.
The dark cool of the mud brick interior a suitable place for new life to begin its journey out.
… not any more. Made for the Blue Banded Bee a few years ago, this hotel, they only really used it for one.
Last year a few still nested there but this year none so far, but nothing good goes to waste.
This year a swarm? – don’t know if they can be called that as they are not a hive (mind) creature.
But this year the masked bee turned up in numbers, followed by the parasitic wasp.
I will watch as everything runs its course, inside and out … maybe get a few pictures.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Gardening
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If the ‘outer’ is the representation of the ‘inner’, as within so without, then gardening also has a greater reality than it appears in sense.
What could it be, this greater reality of gardening, becomes apparent in the endeavour to see, what it is.
What gets in the way of seeing, that has to be dug into, plucked, discarded and recycled?
And what of the flower, it’s greater reality, such beauty of colour and form?
Weeding works, what you water grows …
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Ahoy Skipper
Skipper butterfly that is, sitting proud on the high point of a rotted then dried out lemon. A grand open view before it.
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Not often still enough for a few shots, but this time unperturbed by my giant shadowy presence before it.
The mentioned winter weevil, on the now dried out lemon, laying eggs into or below the skin, youngers still about.
From another angle, for perspective, or just for the entertainment. Amazing that these 1cm long creatures have unique lives.
Some kind of candy beetle, usually found munching a nearby leafy plant, but this time on that old dried mouldy lemon again.
And again, now how did a leaf eater get onto the mouldy old lemon. Somebody carried it perhaps … one of a garden’s mystery.
Tiny bees, not seen by day, much. Then found out of the way, clambering about a branch of the hot chilli bush at night.
Maybe it keeps them warm at night, who knows. But not this one, landed on my hand while shooting the above in the dark.
The first day this butterfly landed on this spot I went to get the camera but it was gone when I got back. Not so this time.
I got back and the skipper was still there, basking in the sun atop a dried out lemon that was used to attract tiny weevils during winter.
The garden is burgeoning, sunlight and greenery and flowers, and all the forms that live in and on.
A cacophony of comings and goings in the stillness of the space it all happens in.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Anty
G’day mate. Howzit going down there?
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Not bad mate, just gettin started on the day.
Whatcha lookin for down there mate?
Ah mate, just stretchin the creases outta me back after a cold night on the leaves.
Well, looking good there mate. Keep it up, eh.
Tryin mate, but someone keeps movin the bloody leaves on me.
Oops, sorry mate. Here ya go, some pollen for breakfast. … Yummm!
It’s first thing in the morning and this little creature was caught out on a cold night while patrolling the orange calendula flowers.
It took a while for him to wake up as the sunlight through the trees spurred him along to get with his morning ablutions.
Before anything that could eat him came along. Not that he would know this in any knowing sort of way, besides instinctively.
How lucky it seems these little creatures are. Not a care in the world, no worries or anxious expectations. No problems.
And all because they don’t think like we do, about themselves. So are free of that burden, or we could call it a baton.
As in a relay race, the human race, a race against time it seems. To flower into a race beyond self reflection, perhaps.
Right on time though, nothing out of place, everything serving the transition.
Pain making sane once more, sort of.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Wasp
A flower wasp I think. Taking a break from the ordinary pace of surviving in the garden.
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It’s necessary to look at something from different angles to get some perspective.
Experience does that, and changes the experiencer, if only a little at a time.
And, eventually, the scales must tip and nothing is the same again. Life does that, eventually.
For this little creature what it’s all about is being wasp, no self reflection to interfere or confuse that simple state of being.
For this writer what it’s all about is realising that original state of being, before (and after) self reflection.
And the way to do it is simple, after all is said and done (the need for experience), stop reflecting self.
By reflecting something else, or nothing at all. There is a way.
Not easy … but simple.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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Times Passed
Wolf spider, sitting exposed and undisturbed on an upturned shoe outside the back door.
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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.
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Forgotten …
… but not lost.
Winter is over and spring is on the way. Time for little ones …
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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.
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Mice + Others
No, no mice here … Native stingless bees collecting resin from fresh cut pine trees at the meditation meetup place.
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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.
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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.
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Spring Time
He, at rest, surveying his domain. A place of ripe smells, dark colours and much mold and fungus. Maybe some alcohol too.
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She, enjoying a taste of her domain, belly ripe for extruding the contents. Probably tiny eggs holding the next generation.
The next generation’s eggs being made, impelled. The forces of nature undeniable, to a fly. It’s over soon enough.
They found a place to lay their future’s dreams, driven to succeed. He overseeing the delivery that will see him gone.
But not before the deed is done. A hole poked in the hard Pawpaw skin to facilitate the process. They followed the only way.
To a dense liquid bed for the little ones, full of promise to do what nature does and reproduce to live again in another form.
But not for me and you, who would be true … not to blindly repeat into endless formal life, and strife. … We ride the black light home.
That time, when creatures are driven to repopulate the earth after the big die-out over winter. Earth intelligence at work.
These flies had a distinct advantage in the survival stakes, riding the cold seas in the good ship Pawpaw.
Winter comes to us all, spring comes to us all who survive, not everybody gets some Pawpaw.
Those that don’t will know a brief transition before riding the black side of sunlight home.
No more spring, no more winter, no more Pawpaw.
No more … until next time.
© Mark Berkery … Click on those pictures for a closer look … and click again.
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