Little Heart, Big Hearted …
Mother Carpenter Bee making the nest early 2013 – a rare appearance as she tossed debris
Male Carpenter Bee feeding on nearby flowers
The best I could get – he’s big and fast – I was lucky
It’s a male Carpenter Bee, I think. It has been occupying the nest excavated in 2013 by the female/mother – I believe – Carpenter Bee. The nest is in a two inch thick stick I had to secure to a metal rod after it rotted in the ground – soft wood.
Then I built the no-till garden beds and recently, a week or so ago, sowed some seed that needed shade from the hot sun, and the shade got in the bees way of returning home – that I noticed one day, having already missed it.
So I remedied the situation, I thought, only to find something else had acted to block the nest for a short while. And no bee to be seen for days now. I wonder if it has another nest somewhere …
I doubt its little heart could survive the rigours of homelessness for long, not like people do. People, it seems, can adapt to almost anything … almost.
We can usually retreat, recover and renew – if the situation allows.
*And just after posting this he returned to the nest.
© Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab …
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Sense and Sensation
The local stingless bees are well fed the mornings here. Salad plants, started as seedlings meant to be eaten, gone to seed and now 4 foot tall with white and yellow flowers are their source of nourishment, for now – with much to come if seed cast and sown is viable, with some already visible.
They are gone by early afternoon, back to do hive work. Lots of coming and going in the garden, not a lot for me to shoot though – too small or fast.
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The pure sensation, a simple tingling inside once you get down to it. A sense upon which the mind is ever trying to create ‘something’, as thought and emotion. The exercise is to resist the pull of the mind to think by focusing on the sensation.
And this occurs in space, the sense of it inside. The more it’s done, the greater the realisation. It takes time, and there is no failure – just the endeavour.
It really is that simple … and a couple more things. :-)
© Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab …
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Gone …
… I was thinking last week I would offer to teach meditation once more and then, out of the blue, one lady who had been before rang to ask if she could come along, saying she saw my current ad in the local paper.
Thing is I don’t have a current ad, or didn’t when she rang. So I took the cue and will start teaching next week – if anyone wants to come along …
All are welcome, especially any who already recognise the need for peace of mind.
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Meditation is the beginning of the end of the mind as a problem. It naturally leads to the practise of being and both are done alone.
There is another realisation of space and sensation that can be called love that is done in partnership.
A rare event … one foot in front of the other.
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Disguised
Tending to the compost bin recently I noticed what looked like a bee come to investigate. It looked and flew like a bee in that its path was cautious, slow and deliberate as it entered the open drum and made its way around inside.
When it stopped on the plastic rim of the entrance I got a few shots and it became apparent it was a fly, by the eyes and other parts, to me.
A bee mimicking fly, must afford it some advantage. Difficult to see past the disguise in motion.
© Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab …
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The Dead of …
Male and Female Lynx spiders
… winter, if that it be.
Sun shines so much I don’t know you see.
But the absence of little ones is telling to me.
Time spent in the garden used mostly to pee.
So no pix to post on this dark wintry night.
Crows only about that do take to flight.
Maybe a pic from the past is aright.
One from a world that can afright.
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Time ebbs and flows, form comes and goes, how hard it sticks depends on a coupla tricks.
Tricks as in feeling for the bottom to clear out the mud, looking not thinking that settles the water, reaching with seeing to the emptiness above and beyond. Where there’s nothing to take or to give. Til the nothing I am in all things is all there is left, until …
Time ebbs and flows, form comes and goes …
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Night Fly
Not much to report from the wilds, in fact the garden has the feel of stasis due to the recent cold. But there’s never really nothing, is there … So I do the rounds of the various nooks and crannies and what do I find but one of the great survivors, the garden fly.
This one, and a couple others, was making his bed in the flowers, literally. At sundown I would find it down on the flower’s centre while the petals would close up around it, to keep the cold and wind off. Not an unintelligent action at all.
In fact it isn’t hard to see the intelligence in any part of nature, the power animating and giving function to the form so that all the parts fit together to make the whole, of nature. It only requires the surrender of prejudice, thought.
Nature, what we are in existence, is represented by the planet and all its parts, the night sky full of stars too, and looks like it never ends, ‘out there’.
Intelligence, what we are before nature, ‘inside’, that gives rise to the appearance things are, can only be a mystery, to a fly resting on a flower.
Being, the silence upon which it is all drawn, endless and endlessly.
What is endless upon which nothing is written?
I’ll have the endless please …
© Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab …
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To Laugh About …
With the rain and cold of this winter came the Kookaburra family to the garden, the male and female. Mates alone, with the young from last season gone to find their own place to live and die.
I suspect a shortage of food around these parts, suburbia, where people keep tidy gardens. It seems to be a rule of mind, with the occasional refreshing wildness.
These birds know where their bread is buttered, a plethora of small lizards to be found scuttling around my garden, plucked mid-stride. Gulped.
Every now and then a sudden raucous noise hits my ears, the distinctive ‘ HA HA HA, HO HO HO, HAHAHA’. Well, something like that.
They remind me of the practicality and diversity of nature, and to laugh – while they scan the ground for a morsel.
A proper laugh strategically applied can change the pattern or weight of a mind.
Does mind have weight, or is it the gravity of the past that tugs?
© Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab …
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Long Night in the Undergrowth
A wholly unpredictable nature. Rain or shine, at least the season is reliably that. Mid winter now, just past the shortest day in Oz, and the rain has blessed the earth. Washing all the dryness down and into work with the living of the soil as the basis for the forms of spring to come. And the freshness can be invisibly sensed, just behind the appearance, inside. A clarity above, a functional chattering of other forms below.
The sun lights the morning yellow and clear calling ‘Good Morning’ as it rises above the rooftops. The green alights to the calling light ‘I’m here’, me too … ‘present’ good lord. It is the lord of the morning, when the storm is not, here whatever … A functional lord, of the solar system, solar lord. Having dominion, care for, the children in its influence – us, me and you at the beginning and end …
All we have to do is ‘the work’. To find and establish the only resting place, inside, to observe the wonder of the passing dancers – the other forms of me and you, the colours, the shapes and other senses of things that die, and don’t. It’s what passing is, a movement from visible to invisible and round again. The passed being something else, at the base of it all, you or I.
That’s the way of things here, a cycle of events in form that represent the inner life. A process of detachment through pain, or something more extraordinary – to me, that ends in … peace.
It’s the perception that matters, is realised and actualised, here … it’s a long night in the undergrowth, everybody sees.
Good morning sun … good morning bee.
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Dragon Hunt
I have been finding a few Dragonfly’s recently, perhaps because of the generally warmer than usual weather, and the new location – a place I haven’t been to for many years. A nearby nature reserve that will soon become a horse track, I am told, so there may be some dung beetles soon to photograph … amongst the many creatures already to be found there.
The site is huge and Dragons can be found all over at different times of day, some by the water where it is clear of trees and brush, some hunt in the fields, some can be found asleep or at rest in the shade where the brush meets the open track, others in the dark shadows. At present there isn’t a ‘best’ spot, maybe as the spring gets on after the winter solstice locations will be more determined – by the nature.
There are many colours of Dragon though few individuals, and getting close to one can take a long time as they are inclined to take flight at the slightest disturbance in their view. Those big eyes are some indication of how sensitive is their sight. Along with being consummate hunters goes a correspondingly evolved survival instinct.
Stillness is the key to observing these wonderful creatures, of mind and body, and the approach takes time and demands an attitude of respect for best results, in my experience.
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Nature's Place 
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