New Wave Bugs …
Squatting the Sunflower.
Passing through.
Loves anything of the Nightshade family.
Impeccable hunter.
Never gives up.
And raring to go again.
Depositing an egg to live off another.
Sap sucker.
Golden Orb Weaver.
The garden went dry for a while, nothing to be seen for weeks. Now it’s populated again, all the young have grown it seems. And I can’t bend forward yet to capture most. But here’s a few from a height.
The Grasshoppers can have the Sunflower, lives in the maturing head apparently – better watch out for the visiting Mynas. The Ladybug Potato Beetle can have the Melon Vine, food for others too.
Jumping Spider lives and hunts in the Passion-fruit Vine, Soldier Fly for this meal. Another Bee rescued from a watery grave, vigorous little thing.
The Wasp laying in the Orange Tail Bee’s nest, she only does what’s natural to her. Bug sucking on the Bird of Paradise. Hmmm …
Golden Orb Weaver lays in wait to catch them all, gets fat doing it, 4” leg span, stickiest web around.
Nothing is alien to the garden, or it’s all alien.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click those pictures for a closer look
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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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Gardener’s Delight?
I suppose that depends on what kind of gardener you are. For one who enjoys macro and all the magnificent creatures that become apparent in all their wonderful colour and architecture it is a delight indeed what can be found, usually just by being there in the garden doing nothing more than enjoying the sense of it all.
One day I saw this giant wasp land on what was supposed to be something of a birdbath, with water plants and stones and things in it for any other creature that might find it attractive. What was unusual was the size of it; about 2.5 inches long and it would fly with all legs hanging down so it looked very relaxed, without a care in the world.
It was collecting water from the bath, either for drinking or to help with making a nest somewhere nearby, probably up in the rotten old paperbark trees. A kind of Potter Wasp I believe that would use the water not just for slaking a thirst but also for making or lining the mud nests it builds.
Then I saw a second one and the first appeared almost immediately after it and they both chased each other around for some time until they landed on the birdbath and started mating by the edge. I still didn’t approach them for any shots as they are extremely sensitive to changes in their environment and I didn’t want to interrupt.
So I let them do what they do and eventually off they flew up into the trees of the garden. They came and went at different times until one day I was surprised to see one just sitting there on one of the stones. It wasn’t a perfect situation for a shot but I took what I was offered and here it is.
What surprised me was the fact I have only ever seen these wasps in the deep bush where they have a distinct ‘don’t mess with me and I won’t mess with you’ sort of attitude. In other words they command respect, and rightly so. There’s an unmistakable intelligence about them.
I gave them their space and they gave me a few pictures. That’s as it is, no problem. Season’s not over yet, though the rain keeps falling …
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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In the Morning …
I usually get up and do the usual things, usually. Then I go have a look in the garden, especially if the sun isn’t up yet. That’s when the most elusive creatures may be seen. But no guarantees, nature is still in charge.
I just know a thing or two about it, how it works. That most creatures need heat to function properly isn’t generally known, for instance. Though it should be obvious, isn’t the obvious often overlooked?
The garden is nearly ready for the coming heat and rain that brings the small creatures in their numbers. Daisy’s everywhere, and Sunflowers, and too many other plants to know or name.
As long as it provides that is fine. And it sure provides me with a simple pleasure, I trust it does the coming tribes in all their shapes and colours. Still, I have to keep an eye out for those that would eat it all.
It would be nice to have a hand in the garden, another who sees what I see and can partake. But living is perfect at 80 to 90% good. So it’s good the way it is. Still, who knows what is round the corner.
More living for sure, or the inevitable death. The gardener’s ultimate contribution to the earth? Anybody out there not notice the slow breakdown of the sense engine?
Another birth, more like. You just have to see the space in between.
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Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab – best in FireFox
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To Dream a Bee
Sorry, no bees today.
Yesterday while walking about the garden I saw this huge black and yellow bee, black bottom and furry yellow jacket, busy feeding at the still flowering Chia with its little blue flowers. The bee was the size of half my thumb, about 3.5cm long, and I later found out it is a Great Carpenter Bee.
It was the biggest bee I have seen and I didn’t have my camera with me, but she was moving too fast anyway. So I just watched as she flew from flower to flower and then away. It’s not yet spring here so this could be a good sign for the forms of life to come.
The weather is wonderful, bright, sunny and cool and plants are finding their place in the garden, before the spring starts up, to be ready for the hotter summer. I don’t decide where a plant goes, it tells me in no words at all.
It’s a form of communication you just have to be open to, after you’ve given up thinking reason is most important – it’s not, but has its place too.
So what I do is unpredictable, because life is unpredictable. Some would call me slow, I don’t mind, but I say ‘what’s the hurry’.
This afternoon I had to lie down for a while, to recuperate from recent exertions, and I had a dream. I saw a black bee swimming in the water – not an unusual sight throughout the year in the garden – and it was happy, a smiling bee.
Someone put a finger in to tickle it and it climbed out onto the hand and flew away. A wonderful little dream, to be a bee.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab – best in FireFox
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Read This at Your Peril …
Just kidding folks. :)
This is a Brown Ringtail Possum making a meal of some of the plants in my garden. She lives in the roof space and often we hear her arguing with the other possum on the roof at night, what a ruckus. Lovely little things though, you just have to give them their space and I can live with a few demolished plants – something else will grow there now. Life living! :)
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab. Sometimes you can click again for bigger if it’s big enough, the picture and the screen.
PS Details of benefits of Firefox 11.0 moved to : Read Me top of page.
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Nature's Place 
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