Little Beauty …
Aliens came and saw that a patch of earth was deserted, of flowers ‘n’ things. So they decided to reshape, replant and renew. Which they did, and turned the desert to green.
The fields were greened and the aliens thought this was good, and the aliens advertised their green credentials and congratulated each other with great fanfare at ceremonies arranged for the purpose.
But they forgot the bees. In the process of renewal they buried the nest sites of multiple native bees (non aliens) that had developed over decades, if not millennia. And the bees didn’t come back.
Then one day a bee was seen holding on to a dried stem of grass in a nearby field, a deserted field.
Just as well the aliens were short-sighted or they might have done the job ‘properly’.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on those pictures for a closer look
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To Bee …
A string of bees. With the spiders closing in more than 20 have moved to my side of the fence.
A female, four blue bands, a little disturbed so I only took a few shots.
The same little beauty from a different angle, and bg.
Once more unto the depths. Out of the water with a tiny hitch hiker – springtail?
And she’s on the move … being a bee. — Click the pix.
… or not. Is that a question?
The bees have no problem. It’s the not …
Bees to the left of me, bees to the right.
It’s the being down the middle that matters.
Ho, ho …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click those pictures for a closer look
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Whittling Down The Form …
Winter has advanced across our sub tropical night with the dark clear sky and the native bees are feeling its cold grip. There weren’t that many to start with but now down to two, and they don’t give up, though there is no choice in the matter, in the season – as health fails.
As soon as the sun is high enough off they are into the garden to find sustenance, and maybe a mate – there seems to be a couple females foraging through the day – to complete their instinctive little lives.
It is always a pleasure to see them patrolling the flowers, always careful of potential predators, where I discourage the spider’s webs and the neighbour’s grandchildren from retiring them early.
The least I can do for our garden’s indispensable residents.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click the pix for a closer look *
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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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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.
© Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab …
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Storm Crew
The long dry spring come summer ended with a massive thunderstorm, fittingly – the dry spell to, well, dry out, and the rain to impel the life-forms to rise up anew.
I was outside in the field when I saw the storm coming, darkening the sky until I was in between the afternoon light on my right and night-time dark on my left where all the street and car lights had come on of necessity – a thin line.
The sky was black grey and it started to rain as I got home, pouring down soon enough. The lightning would flash and the thunder did follow, the time it took between them indicating the distance to the centre. In a short time the lightning flash was followed immediately by a thundering clap of the air – attention.
Right outside my window, the surrounding storm electrifying; it’s coming an exclamation, it’s passing a sign of the new to come. And as it passed I stood out in the rain, the pleasure of the clean cold water washing away the dusty days. In the few days since there has been cloud and rain and damp so some bees, and others, have come into sense once more, heralds of the new year – angels of a kind.
Magical brew … and just as I finished the necessary work in the garden.
Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab, they do look better bigger – FireFox – for me
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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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A Little Sunshine
No matter how dark the clouds or hard it rains the sun always comes out, in time …
This little bee made it to the next act in the play of its life, to fly and eat and do what bees do untroubled in my garden.
Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab, they do look better bigger – FireFox – for me
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In Limbo …
… the bugs, that is. The sun is shining, the climate is mild and getting warmer, the garden is in flower and still all I find is spiders. Nothing wrong with spiders, but they are not bees.
So I dug one up, out of the bowels of the computer. One I haven’t posted before, from a time I had a good session of shooting – because I was present to do so and nature presented, the two are not exclusive.
It’s the same bee as this one – https://beingmark.com/2013/06/15/bee-odyssey/ – that had moved about in the heat of the sun and stranded where it landed if the sun went in or shadow overtook it. That’s what happens when cold, they stop.
Much like us if we were subject to the same relative conditions, except the bees never complain or blame, never feel hopeless nor despair. It’s their nature, instinctively bearing all that comes their way, not a thought for why but just to get on with what they do.
It’s their intelligence, their being a bee, in its perfect place …
Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab, they do look better bigger – FireFox – for me
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Nature's Place 
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