Prayer …
Everything prays. Prayer works.
Careful what you pray …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Gardening …
… in the mind too.
Spring time and all the forms of nature are on the rise. These flies, Doli for short, emerged around one particular plant and I got some shots in the early morning. Have tried getting some shots of the adults but they are flash sensitive and are gone on the pre-flash. It’s rare they stay for a shot.
Occasionally it occurs to me how I started doing macro. After I got a camera and was spending time in nature it became obvious my attraction was to the small creatures at my feet rather than big creatures over there or broad landscapes.
The nearer the better it seems soon took my energies and it was 2 or 3 years of application before I was really any good. It was a process of elimination, of what didn’t work, to reveal what works.
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Someone started me on it, photography. I don’t remember exactly how but do remember C had some influence. He was a friend in his way. I say ‘his’ way since he was a friend and then one day he just stopped communicating.
Don’t know what happened but I am grateful for the small things. From seed big trees grow, and die.
All the best C old friend, wherever thee may be.
© Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab …
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Nectar of The Gods
Amrit, ambrosial immortalising food of the gods, fit for an ant – for if there is a god it is surely in all things, without exception, or the creation is flawed. Notice any holes in the fabric of your universe lately? Well, let’s not go into that too much …
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It was Garuda, bird – king, who stole the Ambrosia of the gods in order to release himself and his mother from enslavement to the snakes – or snake energy. He had to perform impossible feats in order to do so. And so impressed with his character was Vishnu that he made Garuda free forever.
It’s an interesting myth from Indian lore. And like all myth it has truth behind it. He had to take it.
Have you performed impossible feats lately?
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A site that is good for some creatures can be enhanced for macro shooting by the addition of a source of food, as with the honey for the ant here. Nothing wrong with enhancing the scene if everyone concerned benefits.
A little nectar goes a long way.
© Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab …
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Rare Earth
The weather here in my part of Oz has been dry a long time now, months without rain, and it is apparent in that there are few creatures of any kind about, especially insects. Still there are some, here and there, hanging on in the face of great adversity – to them, being also under assault from incessant human activity.
But there’s enough wild water to keep things going in the surrounding scrub bush and managed suburban gardens do help the little creatures survive another day, especially if there is accessible clean water – that they won’t fall into and drown.
Late afternoon recently a rare bee flew into the house, to the cool darkness of the basement. It was trapped against a window for a while, trying to get out, so I caught it but it was too late to release it.
I kept it in a huge jar and slid a sugar laced flower in with it and that way kept it healthy until daylight when it could fly away without the danger of the night.
She didn’t seem to mind at all, this Domino Cuckoo bee – was probably attracted to my bee hotels for somewhere to lay her young.
Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab, they do look better bigger – FireFox – for me
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Bee On My Finger
When I get up, usually sometime in the morning, I have in mind to take a look around the garden. Not only because gardens require some tending, more that the sense of nature is soothing to the psyche and when put first, the sense, it has the effect of diminishing the mentality, the thinking and emotionality engendered by modern living.
It’s a good way to start the day. It helps resolve any lingering dream. And when I have been quiet enough for long enough I can come to things, inside, that nag at me to do something about it – whatever it is. It is tempting to gloss over what hasn’t been resolved, comfortable even, but that is not the way to peace of mind. It’s got to be about peace of mind first …
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On the way around I check the water buckets, where I let it sit to evaporate off the chlorine. I check for trapped or drowning creatures that don’t need to be so, and amongst the others there was a honey bee on its last legs. I lifted it out by putting my finger under it and raising it out of the water, as I do with them all, and I could see by some small movement it was still alive.
It had been raining for days, and cold, so I left it on my finger to warm up and dry out. It didn’t seem to be in any hurry so I got the camera and performed a few contortions to get a few shots. Eventually it woke enough and I put it down in a sheltered spot to gather its strength, fed it a little sugar water and next morning it was gone – back home or back to the hive, who knows. But not yet time to die.
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Did it succumb overnight to a creeping cold malaise or return to its vital instinctive self, given enough life left in it to do so. You just never know, and that state of not knowing is one of the beauties of truth. Because truth, or love – that beautiful state of bee-ing, is beyond the knowing mind.
Nature can be reflective … of the low and the high.
Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab, they do look better bigger – FireFox – for me
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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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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.
Mark Berkery ……. Don’t forget to CLICK on any picture to enlarge it in a new tab
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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