The Flood
Well, ‘a’ flood. It seems the great Australian drought is truly over. Two years of rain now and it doesn’t look like letting up. Last year I was flooded out of my downstairs home and this year I was prepared for it, or so I thought. I wasn’t.
I did what I thought was needed, according to what happened last year, but this year it just didn’t stop pouring and the rain overwhelmed my preparations and I am typing this in a rain soaked room. No matter, just a little inconvenient and tiring – cleaning up. But no electrical equipment, like cameras or computers, was damaged – so far.
When you live on the ground it’s as well to keep everything off it, and so I did. This is my cave after all, and I know my ground. Just got a little careless is all. :)
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I have been watching a bee that has made her nest in a piece of bamboo stuck in a flower pot by the front stairway. She feeds well on the plants I bought, with lovely small purple flowers that just keep burgeoning. I knew the rain was coming; forecasts here are usually accurate so we take heed when a storm is brewing.
There is a short log of soft wood that I had been meaning to drill for its use to the flying population of the garden and it got done in preparation for the storm. But instead of it being of any use to anything as a shelter it simply became a block to the force of the wind and rain so the bee is protected from the worst of it.
And it seems to be working. Every now and then we, I and the bee, meet at the bottom of the stairway as she is coming or going from her hidey hole and she doesn’t mind me at all. That’s a small pleasure to me, accepted by a bee, a wild thing that sees no danger in me, can’t say the same for the civilised things.
No mind to that though, civilised things are a bane to nature, just a process man – the race – is passing through. Nature will survive us; I have no doubt, in spite of, or because of my knowledge of self. We just aren’t as big and destructive as we would sometimes like to believe. Pussies of the universe really. :)
But not pussy cats, nothing so cute as new born nature, some of it anyway.
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The rain has surely been washing the place down. Anything not holding on high enough will have been drowned or washed away. But that’s not Armageddon, that’s nature, and what would we be without it. Stuck, as when nothing moves, that’s for sure.
Not stuck now, and I think I’ll go check up on the wild life in the nearby fields today. It’s perfect weather for finding the rare creatures that are usually hiding or just living out of sight.
What a wonderful nature we have. Indeed! All those God made things that come from this one God made thing – it’s just a word unless you emotionalise it, so don’t.
My great pleasure, in the absence of my great love …
This is the way for today.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab
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The Yellow Bucket
13 is a lot of pix for one post but she’s a beauty.
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It never really became famous but was mentioned in the last post – A Time For … – as the place I found the bee pictured there, and in light of what has happened since probably deserves a post called after it. Only this time it was the white basin. There’s the yellow bucket I keep filled with water for the recent Frangipani planting, and there’s the white basin, the idea for which came from the yellow bucket. That’s the connection, and now you know why it’s not called the white basin. If it matters to anyone.
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There is a palm tree in the garden, like no other palm tree around. But like all palm trees it drops its leaves, or branches, periodically. It also flowers periodically, and this one is flowering now for the first time in three years, that I know of. And it seems to produce nectar first thing in the morning, for only about an hour. For that hour the flowers are royally attended by a host of creatures, the bees I found in the yellow bucket – lots of them, and all sorts of other small creatures that are about and enjoy a little nectar for breakfast.
The upshot is some of these creatures fall into the water in the white basin, haven’t seen a bee in the yellow bucket since I put out the basin, curious that. Anyway, I’m not cruel, just wondering, what eats the nectar and falls from the flowers above the basin that would never otherwise be seen. So in the basin I leave things floating like life rafts that anything that falls in can hang onto until I come along and lift them out. And nothing has drowned yet, always holding on to something.
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Well, I have seen one of these Emerald Cuckoo Wasps before. It was asleep, here – Neon Blue Delight – But this one was wide awake and lively after being rescued from the water. I put it on a post of rounded wood and it went about its business of drying out, cleaning off and warming up.
While it did this I went about my business of taking pictures. It can be difficult when the creature is always moving but that gives opportunity for different shots, and I trust I got a few of this rare beauty.
A little beauty fell into my life, though I did arrange the basin for it to fall into. It came nonetheless.
There is no stopping what nature will be. And only a fool would try.
Does that make us a race of fools? Hmmm!
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When she was done I gave her a sup of honey, and when she was done with that – which was a long time later – I put her in the sunshine and she launched herself into the air and was gone.
Wonderfully colourful little thing.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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A Time For …
… bees again?
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There are Banana trees in the back yard that the Possum and Bats, Flying Foxes they are called, love to eat from when the fruit is ripe enough. I’m watchful to get a few myself this year, as last. The trouble with the trees though is they are big and one recent day I went out and noticed one of them had been cut down, the one that was about to fall on the neighbours shed, that I was going to cut down anyway. Well, a little something I didn’t have to do, no harm.
And I have had to cut down a few of them to keep them from becoming a nuisance, to the civilisation of back yards bordering onto each other, or falling on the clothes line, or the person below. One I cut down was about, what, 20ft tall? And it fell towards the Frangipani, one with lovely red flowers, and broke an extensive piece off it. So, not to waste or leave it for the passers by that took last years cuttings I planted it in the front garden. I’ve been doing a lot of work in the front garden, for the flowers and bugs and photos.
It’s not as if I haven’t done this before but such a large piece, about five feet tall and branched, I wasn’t sure it would work. I plant it in the ground, in a spot it fits, some might say ‘it likes’, and water it enough to keep it from drying out and losing its leaves. It seems to be working; at least it has new shoots and is showing no ill signs so far, maybe a little soft at the extremities.
What I do every day is fill a bucket with water and every now and then go and pour enough to drench the ground, a brown clay soil, and as I said it seems to be working and in about 10 or so years will provide shade in that corner from the setting sun.
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The thing is whenever I go to the bucket and look in I often find some creature that has fallen in the water and hasn’t found a way out yet. So I take care of that first, put a finger under the creature and bring it to the top of a branch and let it off to dry out on the Frangipani tip. Where it sits and grooms itself, wanders about, tastes the water, and sometimes falls back in the bucket below – that’s livin.
The other thing is most of what I find are bees, tiny bees that I have seen nowhere else but in the water bucket. Isn’t that an odd thing? They are less than 1cm long, 10mm, barely visible except for something to see them against. If it wasn’t for all that preceded it I would not know of these particular bees, the ones from the yellow water bucket.
How one thing always leads to another, everything has consequences. Some can be predicted, and some only generally so. But the wonder is in the not knowing. You can try and work it all out but what a mental waste, just wait and see.
You never know what nature is going to show up or where. But one thing’s for sure; you’ll see more of it if you are out in it.
Whatever ‘it’ is. Sense, nature, getting the hands dirty, seeing, smelling, doing whatever.
It’s a pleasure.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Bee on Sunset
It’s warm these days and not so easy to capture a shot of these very fast moving bees, especially out in the wild. So I wait for them at dusk and watch for where they land, and fly and land again. It’s never as simple as taking one spot and sticking to it. They need to settle in like any creature, in their way, moving to and fro until they are right. No more disturbance, inside, and ready for the night.
So, because the temperature often determines how active our bees are, there is a very short window of opportunity, two of them with natural light, and the best one is at dusk.
Waiting to the last minute is an option, or working what I can from a certain darkness, maneuvering the roost for the BG as I go, until I get something that is not the same as hundreds I can get without the work.
So, after a little work, here is the first Blue Banded Bee of the year. On the setting sun. A fitting BG for such a tireless little wonder.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Gold
Green gold, red, blue …
I prefer to call them Jewel Beetles, christmas beetles they are usually called. But christmas is a hoax, the usurpation of what was once the celebration of a passing or seasonal change – with a knowledge of the heavens and earth as its basis, instead of the economic and psychological exploitation it is today – the same thing really, exploitation – the way we are.
Well, we can simply acknowledge the good, whatever it is. The starry night, a windy day, rain in the afternoon, the colourful flowers. The amusing character of the bugs in the garden. A partner if there is one. So many things, small and not so …
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They favoured the fern for eating at the time so I worked with that. Gotta take what you’re given, if you can. And so I present to you … one of the wonders of the earth – of which there are countless. A springtime character.
Gold, a colour in the psyche on the way down, or is it up, to a place that’s not this one.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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A Wave of Wasps
One recent day I noticed all these Ichneumon wasps about. They were flying around checking dark spots on the wood and anything upright. I have seen them before doing this, once, and what happened was the wasp turned round and lowered her pointed end into the darkness and ‘I suppose’ laid an egg, having found something in the darkness to lay it on.
They can smell or otherwise sense with the tip of their tail, very useful that, to a wasp. And it’s not really a tail, it’s an ovipositor, or egg depositor down which she delivers her eggs to a suitable place for growth and development – survival.
That’s what they do when laying time comes, the egg is laid on another creatures laying, such as a grub, and lives and grows on that. Nature doing what it doe, one thing living off another.
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Humans do it too, but they’ve gone mad and feed off each other now. Those movies about people going mad with a rage virus are a metaphor for the truth that seems hidden from most. It’s been happening ever since self reflection caused instinct to warp into emotional self interest.
The way we are. It takes every moments effort to keep that emotion from taking control, as it has with most people. But there’s nothing else worthwhile doing, so …
Into the breach, and see what comes my way …
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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A Jewel of Harlequins
On the white flowered Hibiscus in the nearby bush is a small herd of bugs, Harlequins they are called, don’t know why – possibly for the distinctive symmetrical markings on the ‘face’. These ones are real beauties; they go through many different colours in their little lives, blues, greens and reds. And there are times when they can be found with developing wings that make them look like something from a futuristic car show, and very elegant.
Anyway, these last days they are this wonderful blue with hues and patches of green and red and iridescent, overlaid on a very purposeful looking form. A very attractive little jewel of the forest.
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You have to know where to find them as they don’t appear on all Hibiscus plants, only a few I know of. And then you have to know how to handle them, with care of course. But they also respond to a kind of attention so it’s possible to get a few shots without disturbing them unduly.
And when they are done sitting I put then back exactly where I find them. This one is on my stick, the one I use for stabilising the camera at times is also good for shooting on.
I am usually in the nature just for a walk these days as the little people are shy or just not around after the drastic weather of the last year, and health permitting – other bugs I am catching are from visiting children, no fun at all, the bugs caught this way.
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It’s a simple pleasure of mine, this walking and seeing or sensing. To see the colours and form, the movement and the life in it all.
And then I go home, to tend the wildy garden I have encouraged and nurtured.
Just for a while now.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Dry Time
The long year of rain that washed the bugs away has been followed by a long season of dry, and few bugs are emerging that I can find, not even the Ticks. I had anticipated something of the sort with my gardening work, lots of seeds sown and plants watered with a compost area for bugs to eat and congregate in. The Possum likes the fruit as well. So it’s not all void of creatures to enjoy, albeit tiny creatures mostly.
Even so, everywhere I go there are maturing well fed spiders. It looks like food a plenty but could be a survival strategy, get a net up to catch what you can while there is any catching to be done. But we’ll see how things unfold.
What is coming can be predicted in the big picture, more or less, but the details are unknowable in their timing and context. That wonderful unknown.
There is nothing wrong with there being so few bugs, it’s just different. Last year they were so plentiful at the same times there are few or none this year.
The weather is very different this year, wetter, colder, windier and dryer at different times. And still nature is what it is behind, unmade, of a greater power than man, waving in time.
The one grace of existence, the unmade shining through.
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And here are a couple pix anyway. What a little wonder. And no sign of hunger. :)
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Petals of Pearl
I’ve been seeding the garden with all sorts for a year or so, not knowing what may grow, and every now and then a little wonder appears through the overgrowth. This one has been budding for about a week and finally opened yesterday, some – half of the petals anyway. And today it opened up completely to the spring sunshine.
It’s a little beauty and I’ve been working it to see what happens, image-wise. That’s one of the things I love about nature and photography, I never know exactly how a shot is going to picture – there’s the shot and then there’s the picture produced. And I don’t want to know.
A wonderfully creative way to spend a few minutes, or hours, in sense. To see what a flower looks like and is. The creases and shadows on the white that give it its texture, the shape of the petals that give them their magical quality. And the yellow, heart of the flower, giving up to the prince of light – the Sun.
Yellow face I’ll call it, in a halo of pearly white.
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It doesn’t have to ‘make’ sense, only to be it.
Whatever that means.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Nature's Place 
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