Winter’s End
As the weather pulses cold and warmer it is apparent the winter is coming to an end here in Brisbane. For some time I have resisted cutting the grass as to provide the natural flowering of Dandelions of different kinds, and the other smaller flowers that only grow with the grass. I do enjoy seeing what emerges when nature is left to itself, and that it provides for the tiny creatures that persist throughout the season.
Lately the garden Orb Spider has been showing through as the survivor, possibly as there was a big mother to be seen up in the trees for the last few months, web up to two metres across anchored on stays that were up to seven metres long and that no doubt caught much of what passed through the garden, enough to thrive on. Of butterflies, moths and such whose caterpillars still also persist in the shaded greenery.
This was one of the biggest ‘babies’ I’ve seen of the many there are, webs all over the place whose makers I interrupt as little as possible. I am not much inclined to shape nature except to allow what may be and occasionally to introduce a new source of food or colour, one often being the other.
Except amongst the few there is still a certain reaction to spiders, even the smallest can have lasting effects if it bites. Respect is the key, aware we share our gardens – of all kinds – with all kinds.
We are only one kind. Sometimes not kind at all …
Mark Berkery ……. Don’t forget to CLICK on any picture to enlarge it in a new tab – best in FireFox – for me
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Come Fly with Me …
Couriers of the gods, picking up and delivering packages around our nature, settling down or waking up, and sometimes being sidetracked from their path in spider webs and swatters of other kinds.
They love a good flower as much as the next, a natural appreciation for food, who would guess, an integral part of the complex we are in the existential order.
And of course, there must be truth to the fact, droplets of intelligence, wondrous creations, magnificent life.
Jewelled droplets in the eye of this beholder.
Not a sufferer in sight …
Who, me?
Mark Berkery ……. Don’t forget to CLICK on any picture to enlarge it in a new tab – best in FireFox – for me
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Another Day …
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… another ray of sunshine. The rain is ended for now and the nature is light and bright. There is not much in the way of insects about though there are flowers still. Some Orchids, Strawberries, a few others and this particular beauty I found in the nearby rainforest remnant and brought some seed back for the garden. I didn’t plant them as such, just spread them about and let them find their own place.
And so it is, everything has and finds its place, eventually. In between there is always something of the simple good to acknowledge.
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And another whose time has past, a giant silver haired Cicada.
Mark Berkery ……. Don’t forget to CLICK on any picture to enlarge it in a new tab – best in FireFox – for me
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Bee Odyssey
It has been a tough season for the bees, with all the rain, constant and stuttering through the year and the apparent dearth of flowering plants – at least in the fields where I first found hundreds of them, now so few. Other, unnatural reasons too.
There have been more in my garden than I found in the wild, well enough I planned for it and kept something flowering, and something still – even though winter is upon us and the nights can be so cold, with a clear open star filled sky aswirl.
An occasional visitor now, so few to be seen, found atop the blue Salvia in search of nourishment, a resting place where the sun might strike come morning. I gave it a little honey and adjusted position for the light and warmth of the day, a warning.
We need our bees, not just for what they can do for us but for what they are and do of themselves in the order of things. We are the ones out of order, messing with what should be left alone, then messing again to correct our misguided interference – ad infinitum.
That’s just the way we are, until we are not. But what is it that wakes us? The pain of loss?
Oh well, then roll on … little beauty.
We’ll see …
Mark Berkery ……. Don’t forget to CLICK on any picture to enlarge it in a new tab – best in FireFox – for me
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Surprise, Surprise …
… as I was picking at the Passion vine a couple nights ago – checking for resting or sleeping creatures, clearing dead leaves from the tangle and pocketing the ready fruit, I noticed a curious thing.
One of the leaves I picked was long dead and brown, dried out and curled up, but as it plunged to the ground where it would join in the mulch a bunch of tiny bees fell out and spilled around, almost unnoticed.
I didn’t know they were bees until I took a few shots, being only 12 to 15mm long – my eyes not that good anymore, if ever they were. Then I put what I could find at the base of the vine’s stem and threw on a few more leaves for cover on the cold night, to increase their chance of survival, having disturbed it myself.
The next day I had a look around the spot and there they were, back on the vine, gathered on two adjoining leaves, exposed to the warmth of the sun and the coming night sky – it’s been getting cold here in Brisbane, believe it or not. Clearly they were attracted to congregate but I couldn’t tell anything of where they began their little lives, maybe in some of the hollow stems I put in the vine to encourage the smaller creatures to nest, those that do.
I have not seen the like before, apparently social bees without a home, living on the wing as a ‘swarm’ of around twenty individuals – actually they are a communal bee, males in waiting for a female who nest ‘communally’ nearby, not ‘socially’. That’s what happens when in the garden, the forest or field, aware I am not alone, delightful things appear. The truth of fairies and elves living at the bottom of the garden, in fact they are everywhere but are not what is imagined from the storybooks of old. The magical is still here to be seen, awake to the possibility, restrained from thinking too much – necessities for presence.
Presence, that’s the difference between the rapacious and the sustainable. The former born of wanton indulgence of the machinations of mind, the latter born of knowing enough its consequences. The one follows the other, unfortunate it would seem but misfortune is an unsustainable condition of mind so we move on regardless …
Mark Berkery ……. Don’t forget to CLICK on any picture to enlarge it in a new tab – best in FireFox – for me
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Fly Time
Autumn has turned to winter here in Brisbane, which only means a variation not an actual season change – this is Australia after all.
Apart from the temperature, which is more comfortable than the summers, different plants and animals have their turn – that is how our seasons churn.
Though there are still a few bees to be found in the garden I have been attending to the flies that are often ignored or are just too fast and flighty – I approach them gently. They like Daisies too.
They are also beautiful creatures and have their place and do their job, filling a need of the earth to keep on turning – even in the face of man’s ignorance by our use of insecticides and idealised gardening practises – I actually feed them.
But you can’t keep the nature down, where there is a crack up it wells, where there is a need there will be a taker for the job. And if we should succeed in killing enough we will only kill ourselves, and wouldn’t that be justice – in our almost total neglect of the earth.
You can see it coming, the train wreck of present day capitalism’s (man’s) barely regulated greed and man’s unbelievable arrogance that is ruining the earth in endless war and ideology out of the desire for power over others and the fear for the future, which begets its own form regardless.
The future we fear is coming, by it’s fearing – that’s karma, but nature will always push up through the cracks because man as he is is not so powerful or important as he thinks – there is a greater power behind that requires no belief when we look to see, and it has no face. Beautiful, wonderful, magnificent nature that only requires acknowledgment to be, a fly.
And the flies had a ball. :)
Mark Berkery ……. Don’t forget to CLICK on any picture to enlarge it in a new tab – best in FireFox – for me
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Rainbow Wanderer ll
I was in the rainforest and not much was showing up so I put a tiny drop of honey on a rotting wooden post to see what would happen and the beetle, a beautiful darkling in a rainbow coat, showed up. Then the ants showed up and the beetle ran away. It got to the rim of the rotting post and seemed to think twice about running and turned around to go back to the honey. Honey must be total nectar to the small creatures, bees being so protective of it.
All the while I was shooting what I was seeing, from the best angle I could for DOF and aligning both creatures at the same time. A little exercise you could say. I took many shots and then decided on the arrangement to suit the story. The story was real but I couldn’t get the shots to tell it as it happened.
When the beetle turned round to go back to the honey there was an ant waiting for it and it stopped it at each turn. It was at first cowed by the ant but didn’t give up on the honey. The ant even turned its behind to squirt formic acid at it to begin with but still the beetle came on. The beetle persisted passively and the ant gave eventually way until the beetle was back near the honey and the same ant appeared to be confronting it with a warning – ‘watch out mate’.
Slowly but surely the beetle and the ants came to an unusual understanding and made a meal of the honey together, one on either side of the treasure. I suspect the ants just didn’t want a fight for the honey as there was enough to go round and better not to risk injury or death – survival being foremost of any creature.
That’s instinct working intelligently.
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Rain On …
The weather is still changeable and a few bees still about. This one came out a bit different with Blue Salvia and reflective in the BG.
These bees just keep going no matter what, as long as the conditions are conducive … and it all changes in the blink of a storm.
Mark Berkery ……. Don’t forget to CLICK on any picture to enlarge it in a new tab – best in FireFox – for me
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Autumnal Spring
It looks like the rainy season is coming to an end and it feels like Spring. But that’s only here in Brisbane, Oz. What couldn’t stand the heat and dry or wet is now coming into its own, sprouting, blooming and seeding. It’s nice and cool at any time of the day.
There are still native bees about and I suspect this Autumn’s Spring will give way to an abundance of forms, and then it all changes again. The nature of being in existence, change.
Even up a ladder there were bees flying about. It’s good to see, to be.
Mark Berkery ……. Don’t forget to CLICK on any picture to enlarge it in a new tab – best in FireFox – for me
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Nature's Place 
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