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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They come, They go …
Over the year the visitors to the garden vary according to the season, the weather, heat, rain, food, shelter, breeding cycle and probably other conditions we can’t know or measure – we don’t know it all, that’s for sure.
So I spend time in the garden tending the plants – which is its own practical value for peace of mind – and often I will come across a little wonder of nature, our nature. These are just a few.
And it only happens because I am present to see – and can still get back up off the ground where I usually shoot them, everything else is imagination.
Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab, they do look better bigger – FireFox – for me
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Spider Me Blue
Or what colour suits you, catch one or two … It’s not so difficult, ladies and gentlemen, elegant too. They sit in their web and nothing disturbs them except by accident, the spider’s boon.
Watching one floating in the sunshine as the breeze caused it to breathe, in and out, into it flew a fly, of some sort. Straight onto it she was, from a standing start in the cold air to the centre of the web and something to eat – gone.
Fingers on every thread that matters, she knows her way, her home. She knows her stuff, her job, and don’t go falling into her tricksy web or walk into her on a flower or you’ll never get out. She is made for catching things, gripped in her thorny embrace, bit by long fangs a-dripping.
Paralysed, liquefied and drank all in. Nothing but a husk to show where you’d been. That’s her way, to waste not of the bounty that fills her, makes her grow and mate to fill her need for little ones – instinctively you could say, intelligently nevertheless. That’s our nature, my nature, like it or not, come what may.
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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Another Day …
![3-[000012] - Mark Berkery](https://beingmark.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/3-000012-mark-berkery.jpg)
![4-[000032]_1 - Mark Berkery](https://beingmark.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/4-000032_1-mark-berkery.jpg)
… another ray of sunshine. The rain is ended for now and the nature is light and bright. There is not much in the way of insects about though there are flowers still. Some Orchids, Strawberries, a few others and this particular beauty I found in the nearby rainforest remnant and brought some seed back for the garden. I didn’t plant them as such, just spread them about and let them find their own place.
And so it is, everything has and finds its place, eventually. In between there is always something of the simple good to acknowledge.
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And another whose time has past, a giant silver haired Cicada.
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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Bee Odyssey
It has been a tough season for the bees, with all the rain, constant and stuttering through the year and the apparent dearth of flowering plants – at least in the fields where I first found hundreds of them, now so few. Other, unnatural reasons too.
There have been more in my garden than I found in the wild, well enough I planned for it and kept something flowering, and something still – even though winter is upon us and the nights can be so cold, with a clear open star filled sky aswirl.
An occasional visitor now, so few to be seen, found atop the blue Salvia in search of nourishment, a resting place where the sun might strike come morning. I gave it a little honey and adjusted position for the light and warmth of the day, a warning.
We need our bees, not just for what they can do for us but for what they are and do of themselves in the order of things. We are the ones out of order, messing with what should be left alone, then messing again to correct our misguided interference – ad infinitum.
That’s just the way we are, until we are not. But what is it that wakes us? The pain of loss?
Oh well, then roll on … little beauty.
We’ll see …
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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Surprise, Surprise …
… as I was picking at the Passion vine a couple nights ago – checking for resting or sleeping creatures, clearing dead leaves from the tangle and pocketing the ready fruit, I noticed a curious thing.
One of the leaves I picked was long dead and brown, dried out and curled up, but as it plunged to the ground where it would join in the mulch a bunch of tiny bees fell out and spilled around, almost unnoticed.
I didn’t know they were bees until I took a few shots, being only 12 to 15mm long – my eyes not that good anymore, if ever they were. Then I put what I could find at the base of the vine’s stem and threw on a few more leaves for cover on the cold night, to increase their chance of survival, having disturbed it myself.
The next day I had a look around the spot and there they were, back on the vine, gathered on two adjoining leaves, exposed to the warmth of the sun and the coming night sky – it’s been getting cold here in Brisbane, believe it or not. Clearly they were attracted to congregate but I couldn’t tell anything of where they began their little lives, maybe in some of the hollow stems I put in the vine to encourage the smaller creatures to nest, those that do.
I have not seen the like before, apparently social bees without a home, living on the wing as a ‘swarm’ of around twenty individuals – actually they are a communal bee, males in waiting for a female who nest ‘communally’ nearby, not ‘socially’. That’s what happens when in the garden, the forest or field, aware I am not alone, delightful things appear. The truth of fairies and elves living at the bottom of the garden, in fact they are everywhere but are not what is imagined from the storybooks of old. The magical is still here to be seen, awake to the possibility, restrained from thinking too much – necessities for presence.
Presence, that’s the difference between the rapacious and the sustainable. The former born of wanton indulgence of the machinations of mind, the latter born of knowing enough its consequences. The one follows the other, unfortunate it would seem but misfortune is an unsustainable condition of mind so we move on regardless …
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
Rain On …
The weather is still changeable and a few bees still about. This one came out a bit different with Blue Salvia and reflective in the BG.
These bees just keep going no matter what, as long as the conditions are conducive … and it all changes in the blink of a storm.
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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