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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Treasure Ant
And a little treasure they are, caretakers of the dead, diggers of the soil. Indispensable pieces in the great Earth machine.
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It’s that time of season the only creatures around are ants, or so it seems. The passion fruit vine, with its highways and byways and the wonderful smell of exotic flowers is home to many kinds of ants, all patrolling for a bite to eat, a little nourishment. The only way to get a shot is to stop one and food does the trick.
I’ve watched an ant eat until it looked like bursting, its abdomen swelling to accommodate the liquid gold. A little honey stops an ant in its tracks, some feed until it can take no more, and off back to the nest it goes – I suspect – to share the treasure. Sometimes with an initial stagger from the unaccustomed weight and balance.
We do it too, with all the momentary treasures of a single lifetime, absorb and distil the essence to eventually radiate as our light or wisdom – after many years climbing around on the vine of experience, you may have noticed.
Whether the treasure is real or illusory, when it’s gone we move on, ever in search of the next de-light. Until the endlessness of the search is seen to be the grand delusion.
Then now is all there is, no loss or need to search, no ignorance nor despair. No need to experience any more, no need, no need.
Still, inside, there is the nourishment of the simple good, no thing, no form, no problem.
And the reality of the moment grows in focussed attention.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click the pix for a closer look
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Forbidden Fruit – Fly
An area of the front garden has been home to a growing experiment for a while now. Some successful, some not, it’s trial and error learning.
At first I was hand pollinating the melon flowers but gave up after it became apparent the plant – and garden – had a mind of its own and would produce what it will.
Of four or so developed melons one made it to the fridge and the others served as a nexus of community for the gardens tiny intelligent inhabitants. A busy metropolis for a while.
The fruit fly are a wonderful looking creature and they decimate a soft fruit crop in days. Once the melon’s skin was broken by the caterpillars the flies were in and it was over for the fruit, and the gardener …
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Where there is gain there is loss, and suffering if there is attachment to either. The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and bad.
Who still needs it … hands up.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Dear Bee …
All of a sudden it went from hot to cold and you were caught out in the rain, needing heat to fly, weighed down by water. Lucky there was a flower to land on and wait out the weather.
When I saw you the rain had been falling for a day and you looked on the verge of drowning but I’m sure your kind are no strangers to such events, or the hunger that drives.
Regardless, I arranged some background to shoot against and after a while the flower you gripped so tight fell from the stem to the earth, naturally worn out, dead.
So I picked you up, still gripping the dead flower, and brought you to where we could both relax and recover. It was easier for me to shoot from a stool and you dried out, good all round.
After a while you started to move and flex your wings, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before you were away on the breeze, rain permitting, in search of your fulfilment, as a bee.
And as I watched that’s exactly what you did, took to the air, and I saw you fade to the distance, a small dark dot becoming nothing quickly – disappeared from sense, no more in mind.
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I went for a walk in the garden, camera in hand, and there you were again, or a brother or sister, feeding on the same kind of flower, still a little tired from the weather event.
Climbing, not flying, from flower to flower, so unlike a bee, I waited until you were occupied, focussed, and moved in for a shot, or two, and I was lucky.
We were lucky, I got some pix, you got to live a little more, eat, then fly away, doing bee things.
Not a bad day’s work at all, for a monkey and a bee.
On the earth that makes and breaks us …
… what we are and what we are not.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Denizen …
Occasionally I see these huge beetles flying around the garden, with a loud buzz to match. They do command attention.
The ones I get close to though are already stopped, such as the one pictured – I call them Leopard Beetles, for the markings – frolicking in the flowers.
It was climbing around one of the straw flowers, munching away on the pollen, so I took the opportunity for a few shots.
Others I have seen in the flowers of the garden have ended up as food for the Kookaburra or the Pied Magpie. Two who keep a close eye out for a morsel.
There seems to be enough to go around, for now.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Lobelia Cafe …
Born to hunger, built for the job, he set out to find his fulfilment.
This way and that, hither and thither, finding only what falls to his nose.
Then out of the blue, a stairway did rise, a possible route to enlightenment.
Climbing around, there a dead end, the scent of the mystic as ever arose.
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Undeterred, by weak footing and treacherous winds, his life appeared a plod.
Now and again, breakthrough the tangle, the stairway would rise up once more.
The darkness would come, he tuckered down, waking to morning light as a god.
To start over his climb, refreshed by the nectar, a sighting of the far shore.
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Til one day it occurred, he saw the flaw, stopping him dead in his track.
The error it was, the far shore is not there, was time to cease reaching.
Twas enough of him spent, the way he was bent, a load off of his back
Supped he from the well, the darkness dispel, listen … no more preaching.
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© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Smiley …
Did you know a spider smiles? Yes, somewhere, inside, below the surface appearance every spider smiles instinctively, psychically.
They smile because that is the natural state of things when there is no problem. And a spider never has a problem because a spider doesn’t think and get emotional.
Maybe they are on to something there, instinctively. Something we the people can perhaps learn from. Though we think, and it seems often too much, we can get back to the perfect instinct.
The instinct that allows no unnecessary thought and right action in the moment, and starts with the simple pure sensation inside, the tingling or pressure in every part of every body.
We only have to relearn it. After all we were once instinctive creatures, just like the spider and the fly. And it begins with attention to …
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Did you know every insect meditates? Yes, every fly, bee or bug … Except in flight from the spider.
And, in death, there is just no more need – for the insects, or we the people.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Knock, Knock …
‘Who’s there?’
It’s me, Bug …
‘Bug who?’
Buggg, your old mate.
‘Well, come on up old mate …’
G’day fly, me old mate. Howzit goin?
‘Hang on! You’re Ahhgggsassin bug. Bugoff!’
Aww come on, I’m only a little hungry on this cold night.
‘Buzzzz, bzzz, bzz – now where am I going to land, on this bloody …’
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The night is a bloody experience for many a bug. Some cop it, and some are copped – oops!
We are lucky, having come far from our savage nature. Or are we, did we …
Did we just mask the real for the convenient and safe – ish …
To have it stripped by consequences inevitable.
And it all comes from within.
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On that hill there …
What is it?
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Well, what is it disturbs in the quiet of night?
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Jumper …
So named for their ability to leap a good distance with some accuracy these spiders are the cuddly arachnids. They display a curiosity and fearlessness I would only expect to find in a pet or otherwise domesticated creature.
This one, a male with his punk hair-do, was on the door handle and I caught him just as he fell as I touched it. So I put him on a flower where he sat, maybe to catch something to eat …
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If pix or text don’t appear as normal that’s because I am using a different computer and having to improvise on what software I use on elements. It’s a different screen too, so can’t tell if pix look what I am used to.
My computer crashed and I haven’t been able to get it fixed, it may just be dead and gone. I should be able to recover files eventually but I’m not in any hurry, as long as there are bugs in the garden to photograph.
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Sometimes it’s a ‘blessing in disguise’ to lose what has grown over a period of years, a form of surgery. An opportunity to start again, at least to keep it simpler.
If I learn anything by experience it’s that, complicated fills the space reserved for peace – of mind.
And we do according to our … capacity or willingness to see through the imagery.
© Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab …
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Nature's Place 
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