Nature's Place

It’s just past mid winter here and I didn’t expect to see this half inch crab spider on the lavender buds.

*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again.

She takes up position on the flowering tip and stretches out her ‘arms’ waiting for a visitor to come.

Her vision may not be great, she opens her arms wide to the touch of my lens on the stem beneath her.

And begins waving her arms, perhaps as a warning or a way of appearing bigger than she really is.

It’s a common enough strategy, even amongst people who have taken it past the physically desirable.

To the emotionally or notionally deluded. But of course spiders don’t build psychic constructs of want.

They act purely instinctively in preservation of the organism. No self reflection or intellectualizing here. No thinking self.

Probably not the same crab or flower spider as last year, but she sure looks like a close relative.

Flower spider because they hang around blooming flowers to see what they can catch to eat.

No sign of her prey this time, there’ll probably be others this year, dropping into the garden.

Since she is almost fully grown she probably lived up in the nearby flowering trees.

Then sensed aromatic colour in the garden and dropped in for a look-see.

Now she’s gone … to pastures new, or tidbit to a passing bird.

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A spider’s lot. To live and die a spider. How simple that is.

Free to be everything spider is, no complications.

Of mind, minding things that don’t matter.

To a spider being …

© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look

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Tiny spider surviving the winter hunting on the long lasting strawflower.

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No doubt he will migrate if food becomes scarce and hunger grips.

It just makes sense … surveying his tiny domain.

An even smaller wasp becomes food for the tiny spider.

Enough sustenance to keep body together for a while.

Such is life in form on planet earth.

… of life.

One creature from the garden, after nothing much for months.

Giving a sense of the coming spring.

Thank you spider … and wasp.

© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look

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*Click on the pictures for a proper look … and click again.

At the recent housesit in Calvert there was a pool, functional and clean enough. It was the source of many a creature that fell in and struggled for its life on the water’s surface, with no hope of getting out without help. And many were, helped.

During the night it was the same, only fewer were to be found, naturally. One such was this Huntsman spider, or Huntswoman more like, and she was literally walking on water.

So I leaned over, stretching my arm out with the camera, careful not to fall in and join her, while I got a few shots of her in situ before raising her out on my ever ready stick.

I’m pretty sure she wasn’t there by her choice or design. Though she was having no trouble staying afloat she was clearly out of her element, with little control over the direction of her travel.

She wasn’t unhappy to be out, no sign of stress or distress, resting a long while after her ordeal. It takes a lot of energy for land creatures to survive on water, especially water this cold.

And so she lived to hunt another day, I suspect, as she was gone in the morning from the safe place I left her to recover.

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I have heard of a man who walked on water. But I think that may have been a metaphor for something else. Even though anything is possible in the psyche, and it all happens in the psyche, I have a different take on water walking.

Long, long ago, in the time of the flood, when the waters (of emotion) were over the head of Man s/he struggled to survive.

But she kept at it and eventually got his head out of the maelstrom.

And so began our water walking efforts.

Or so it seemed …

© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look

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Waiting in the darkness to come.

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She was in the way of my walking.

So up on my stick she did go.

To find a new home for her stalking.

… gardeners of an other kind, the web weaving kind.

Strung across the open spaces in the garden, orb weavers work.

To catch a meal on the wind, best caught out in the open, unencumbered by the green.

Down long tunnels of dark space through which many small creatures pass.

Night time, quiet time, death time. Influence cast afar.

In stillness, in the cold light of the full moon.

The stars stopped twinkling.

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This post was scheduled days in advance so I was ready for a house sit on Thursday prior.

Something that was right, not wanted – a small discipline of self, you could say.

Turns out the old dogs are glad for a walk, as long as we avoid the bindi lawn.

The horses love a bit of fruit from a hand, though not all of the four are friendly.

There’s a gym, of sorts, so I can maintain my recently added exercise form.

And the area is dry and cold, so that fits too, to help keep mind in its place.

There’s also a place where little ones go, an old industrial dam …

Just follow the birds and there be the fruits.

© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look

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