The Wet
Well, no sooner than I have said how dry it is here the rain comes. And it poured floods up and down the East coast. Fortunately where I am is protected from the worst of it, barring high winds – falling trees, ravaged gardens, big clean up and the heat/humidity.
Some are saying these extremes are here to stay and I am either at home with it or move on from it, remains to be seen – it doesn’t get easier. It was a cyclone that hit the coast a few days ago and the next day there were more bees about than I have ever seen, and of kinds I have never seen before.
People and all sorts of creatures were made homeless, and then it all sorted itself out, as it does. I am at least pleased the little ones had food for the duration, and the shelter a wild garden provides as habitat. And pleased for the opportunity to see so much I wouldn’t otherwise have done.
I have since noticed there is a gang of male Blue Banded Bees that roost in the back garden, up against the fence, on the dried out stems of Star Jasmine – the same the small native wasps like to hang their nests from. Also, while clearing up I disturbed a Carpenter Bee that had made its home in a dried out stick I used to support plants. When I noticed it flying around the spot the stick used to be I put the stick back, today the Carpenter is also back.
It seems such extremes are approaching, in time and event; there will soon be no option but to move on – one way or another. I could do with new pastures anyway, the old being so worn …
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab – best in FireFox
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New Year?
Not for this little fellow. Probably because he was shot on Xmas day, and it was raining. It is still 2012,yes??? Had to check.
What’s this obsession with the marking of time, easter, birthdays, holidays, xmas and now new year? Or is it just a distraction from time, psychological time.
Is it just a political and economic opportunity? Or has that just usurped the natural people’s celebration of the passing of the seasons. Because make no mistake, the pollies and business-men only have their own best interests at heart – with the occasional exception, there’s always an exception to make the rule.
Anyway, given the obscenity and sentimentality of modern celebrations I give them a miss. I would rather be writing this, or shooting pix in the field or garden, but certainly not getting inebriated with so-called friends who are gone tomorrow when the headaches set in.
Inebriated on my own, now that may be, and everything else out of mind? Feet up and watching a no ads TV program or movie of a night. :)
And now and again going and having a look at what the new night may have brought, moths, spiders, and all …
Anyway, I trust you still enjoy the pix, and sometimes the words that go with them.
All the best …
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab – best in FireFox
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Bugs Galore …
This one went to sleep in the Sunflower, no better place to wake up first for an early start to the day.
… or, how to attract bugs to your garden so you don’t have to go hunting and can’t say you can’t find any to shoot – with the camera of course … :) You don’t have to be a gardener, sense will do, just don’t think too much.
Bugs need all the same things we do, so it shouldn’t be difficult finding any once the basics are provided – by you and the available but often unknown, unpredictable or hidden nature. These days, after so many years of insecticide and habitat destruction, ignorance of the simple fact of things, nature can do with a little help from friends – people who have some respect for the little things without the need of reward other than the nature itself. That’s the idea anyway.
This one came in the house one night and I caught it when it landed, put it on a Sunflower and got a few shots – no idea what it is, Sawfly maybe …
Where to start? Put yourself in the creature’s shoes and look at what you need for the basics. They are no different to us, just smaller and it’s a jungle to them, or a desert, but wild and savage either way. We’ve got a piece of earth, no matter how small or barren it is, and depending on what is most obviously absent I would start with that. If it’s shelter that’s missing provide some, in the form of plants and old tree trunks if there are any handy, or anything that will provide shelter from the elements will do, even bricks or just bits and pieces.
Plants need water and so do bugs, so water is necessary, watering the plants and an open and available source which can be as simple as a bucket you keep filled – bird’s love it too – will serve many creatures as long as there is ramp access of some kind, like a stick or other stable buoyant object/s for them to drink and gather from.
Got a good watering as I do the daily rounds, didn’t seem to mind much …
For food a compost heap of only vegetable matter is a great production ground. Keep it moist and shaded and it will be a centre of life in the garden even if it’s not obviously so. Don’t be too discrimination, the spiders and plant bugs have to have their day, and the garden will eventually find its own equilibrium. Save any plants you can and be generous to the garden and its needs – and it will be generous in return. That’s the way it works, diligence is always rewarded, and you don’t have to be an expert though there’s nothing stopping you if that’s what you want in order to know and understand more.
Flies, love the compost heap. Also attract predators, another form of life in the wild little nature.
Shelter is essential if the other basics are in place. If there’s nowhere to sleep or rest the bugs won’t stay for long – would you? So the plants are shelter to some bugs, the compost is that to others, you can have a heap of wood in another spot, and then there is the mimicry of specifics such as for bees that I have.
I have an old cut log that I drilled varying sized holes in for all the flying creatures that might take up residence. I had it up for months before any bee took an interest, and then wasps and other flying creatures came along and many holes are now occupied by the next generation.
If I am attending enough I may even see some of these babes emerging.
If you have wings and are the right size, and like holes, this is the place for you – see the bee approaching bottom left …
One thing the little nature doesn’t need is philosophy, or teaching of any kind. They are instinctively intelligent and don’t need to dwell on anything outside the moment so they are as content as can be, no problem.
One thing I have to watch out for is the Ichneumon Wasp, she parasitises the others nests and that won’t do. So I discourage them, in my way. Just as I discourage parasites of another kind, the human kind …
Mantis, keeps the hungry Grasshoppers in check, naturally …
Other predators are also attracted to the garden if you give it enough time.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab – best in FireFox
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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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Ant Queen …
… Warrior of her kind.
With such a world of beautiful earthly creatures at our feet it’s hard to see why we got caught up in the world of mind, except it is a seductive world of emotional excitation and identification with form. Thinking is habit forming, is addictive.
That’s the way it is. And only appropriate experience is going to change it for real – for real being for enough so it doesn’t have to be any more.
When you tend the garden for long enough you see the most extraordinary things – nothing to get excited about, because I don’t get excited. Lately I have noticed little heaps of light brown clay building up on the dark brown clay around the garden, only a couple inches high and the same wide with a hole in the middle.
They are made by these tiny ants that I hadn’t seen before in the garden and I wondered what they were about, why the excavations, it being so cold and wet. Then these few winged creatures started appearing on the passion fruit leaves.
When I got up close it became apparent they were ants, queen ants. Only the queen has wings, as far as I know, to get to another place to start another colony of ants. So they can get on with the business of looking after the land, what ants do in Oz.
They are tiny, about 12mm long and difficult to get enough in focus but one good one is enough. The digital age has given me the option of throwing away what doesn’t work, not that I throw anything away anyway but I don’t have to spend money I don’t have finding the good ones – is the point.
Photography was once the preserve of the well off, who could afford the money and time. How times change. Times change in such ways that what was once difficult is now easy, or easier for many more than once was. The same goes for everything, not least the art of knowing my self.
It’s not that this has become easier but that more can do it now. I suppose that means it is easier for many but there are still the few who break the ceiling, tear the envelope, crack the code, for those who follow.
Does it look like anything has really changed? Is human nature more compassionate or intelligent today than a thousand years ago? I don’t think so.
What has changed is the appearance of things in the world, material things; we have progressed from the spear to the bomb, from the hole in the ground to the fridge. And the flip side, the inside, is a paradoxical increase in real intelligence.
Not the intelligence of remembering and composing the bits, but the intelligence required to be still. Test it, you are intelligent – can do all sorts of things that are recognised to require intelligence.
Can you still the mind, stop thinking, long enough to see past it, long enough to know peace of mind? Or is that just not one of the actions of intelligence recognised?
I had a dream, now I think I’m going to have to write the book. :)
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab
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Nature's Place 
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