What A Feast …
… the garden is. In more ways than one, I know.
To the senses a delight, of colour and form, scent and texture. Then just a little closer and …
… nature knows no pity, no sentimentality, just survival and reproduction. Only the fittest, the fastest, the craftiest endure.
And the wild formless intelligence behind it cannot be denied, while no thing, no body, lasts longer than its time.
I had a dream … that turned out to be a nightmare.
Now I don’t dream any more.
And the dream goes on.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click a picture for a closer look
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Noble Visitors …
It’s another record year, never been 2015 before, as far as we are aware.
And in the garden it’s been another record, but who’s counting … I can’t help noticing the increase in variety and numbers of insect visitors, especially now the butterfly bushes are flowering and a few years work with the soil is bearing fruit.
It is said the Stag is a noble beast – I remember that from somewhere. Maybe it comes from the old English kings practise of hunting them, they had to be noble for kings to hunt them …
But really, kings are just ordinary men dressed up. Every body is of noble blood, all god – whatever that is – made. And the antlered beetle is no exception.
All god made things, and all things god made. To exclude one is to invite conflict to the mind.
Try maintaining a prejudice, a psychological position, without some conflict appearing.
As within, so without. And nothing is absolute, both ways …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click a picture for a closer look
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Raiders On The Tom’s …
They’re back, the dreaded fruit fly – dreaded by some because they destroy the harvest. I see them as a photo opportunity, since I don’t expect so am not disappointed.
I have a few tomato plants at different locations in the garden and at just one site something has been taking big bites out of some growing fruit and opening the way for so many others to feast.
This years garden is burgeoning beyond bounds. Plants overgrowing others to their apparent detriment. I just do a little pruning, dead-heading, and trust it works out for the best. The insects are loving it.
And oddly – not for me but against the usual thinking, I see the insects as a good sign, all is well in my garden. Because that’s nature and my garden is me ‘out there’. As within so …
I find if I let what must be alone ‘enough’, inside and out, it doesn’t take more than its share of the available space and things are in balance, not too much or too little of anything.
Equilibrium, who could ask for more?
I know, I know …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click a picture for a closer look
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Butterfly Bush …
… and visitors.
I haven’t seen a Butterfly on the bush yet but there are plenty of other creatures enjoying the bounty of fragrant nectar.
The Crab or Ambush spider is unusually plentiful but elusive with so much flowering to hide away in at the sense of touch of a finger to the branch – I usually hold the creatures platform, resting lens tip on same hand to optimise image sharpness.
They are not big enough yet to tackle the Honey bee that is a frequent visitor, as is the Blue Banded Bee. The former doesn’t stop longer than a couple seconds, the latter even less. I am lucky to get some feeding bee shots at all.
It would take different equipment than I have to get feeding Blue Banded Bee shots, or the perfect alignment of some unlikely circumstances, shooting at a working distance of 4 inches and less and only seeing what’s in the frame through the LCD – time lapsed.
I take what I can get, or accept what I am given, maintaining equilibrium in the face of inducement to ‘try’ for more. As if nature is teasing me with a view of a desirable composition of behaviour only to whisk it away in the blink of an eye, again and again.
Such anticipation, the conflict between structured desire and what is calmly attainable, is a fundamental pain. An unacceptable disturbance to peace of mind that is best negated as quick as possible, eventually, by practise.
In the end, the end of finding out what doesn’t work, for me – what I don’t want, nature or life presents and I receive with a final single motion of the press of a button. Relaxed is the focus.
To take a single step in the right direction, against the pressure of mind, to capture a masterpiece of nature.
What I do is present pictures of that, images of the masterpiece nature is.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click a picture for a closer look
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Droning On …
8 seems like a lot but I couldn’t leave out any more.
Tough little creatures these Hoppers, careful handling required.
The new Butterfly Bush, six of them, are coming along nicely. One has been flowering for a week and the scent is divine, the colours dark and rich. That’s to me, who knows what the little people see and smell. Probably the same in their way.
I got the plants early in the year off ebay, grown in Victoria, and put them straight in the ground a couple months ago, with space for them to expand, and they are all doing well. I’ll have to do a post on just the flowers, with their different and wonderful colours and scents they deserve it.
For now though I want to introduce you to the Drone Fly, lover of the flower’s nectar. A female I’m sure, with clearly separated eyes,who dropped by and surprised me one day as I was checking for infestations – I have been getting hoppers congregating and mating on new stems of the two golden flowered bushes and I don’t want them destroyed.
What I do is grasp two or three hoppers at a time, sidelong between thumb and forefinger, carefully as they have some microscopic thorny growth, and throw them away with any wind to ensure they don’t directly return. As I watch them disappear against the sky they take wing and change direction, like tiny helicopters, usually toward the big palm tree nearby. Then, a day or so after, I do it again …
It’s a necessary process to keep the plants healthy as they grow. I can’t use insecticide, that would be silly since I want to photograph bugs, unnecessarily criminal even. Well, it would be if we valued the little people as we should. I enjoy going around the garden anyway, and everything I do there is of value, in a sense.
We should value them because they do enormous work, but we don’t because we don’t see it, and that will cost us … If ever there was a case for the need of faith insects are it. Have faith they are necessary, even vital, and enjoy their presence that is often delightful, when time is taken to observe them at play.
Giving them space, not too much to the destroyers – our nature has been unbalanced by our interference, and anything else they need for their well-being, and they will entertain all day long without robbing the larder.
They love nothing better than to show off their colours, form and flying skills, and other not so unusual but often surprising behaviour …
Faith, all is as it should be … And if something needs changing, change it will – where there is willing, or not.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click a picture for a closer look
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Golden Head
The big bods are arriving to the garden now, about 5” long this one, and there is plenty to eat this year so no need to evict them to the neighbours, yet. :-)
A Locust I believe, perched on the veranda, cautious but unafraid. She backed up from the lens so I manoeuvred her and eventually got some nice background in the frame – employing behaviour that appears undesirable to the inexperienced.
But no need to push it. At the angle she was and with what I had with me at the time there were only a few shots available. The upper body/thorax and head portrait is most expressive, for a Locust, and I thought the foot especially interesting.
Armoured, both for gripping and striking. Those sprung legs are strong enough to propel the heavy beast into the air, and those spurs are capable of penetrating and damaging the strongest of attackers.
It’s wild out there …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click a picture for a closer look
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Coloured Light
Walking the garden at night with a torch, to see what shows, here and there a little reflective colour glows.
Holding on upside down, a precarious perch, for you or for me, nowhere to go but for certain, of thought it is free.
And after the flash fired and lit up the night, again and again, I went to bed, everything to me was all right.
When from my darkened sleep I went, there she still was, as the sun rose, the night rent, holding a silent pose.
The colour did burst anew, yellow rose, or sun, who knows, hit the flash again for a few.
Then, as the work done was my best, I thought I would give it a rest.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click a picture for a closer look
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Old Moulds …
break … eventually.
It can be difficult to break from the diktat of previous form. So I thought, again, to show some of the variety of the garden, for your viewing pleasure – and mine. Outside my usual ‘sets’, here is a small sample of the wondrous creatures that come and go in the usually unseen world at our feet.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click the pix for a closer look
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Nature's Place 
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