Tag Archives: Creatures

Discovery Morning: Minibeasts

Posted on by

We had a really exciting adventure with the local school (Kentucky Public School) a week back.

A class of kids came over to investigate, explore and discover ‘minibeasts’ otherwise known as insects or arthropods to be precise. We all spent time in and around the dam and investigating the living systems in the swales.

What Lies Beneath… 

The kids ran down the hill, kicked off their shoes and each with a net and a white bucket scooped up matter and observed what emerged from their ‘catch’. Most were wet through in minutes, but didn’t seem to mind in the excitement of discovery.

It was really fun and so exciting finding out what was in the dam. We discovered different shapes, sizes, colours, patterns, with legs and without legs, tadpoles, nymphs, larvae, large, small, minute, eggs, see through shrimps, minute yabbies and millions of insects and creatures we have no idea about what they are yet. We learnt so much about various species, their life cycles and all sorts of other incredible things God has created.

I unfortunately didn’t get any photographs of either the naturalists at work nor their discoveries at the pond as I was personally so engrossed in the whole thing. So below is a photo of the dam we checked out and I have attached two resources with all sorts of water creatures that you can investigate and go and find for yourselves if you so desire in a waterway or dam near you. The resources I found simple but informative with all sorts of information I did not know. They are fun for kids to check out when they find the various insects listed – we laminated a set and took them down to the dam so the kids could look them up on site, literacy in the field.

20141209 Minibeasts day with Kentucky School. Unfortunately I was so involved in this part of the morning that I didn't get any photographs of the kids exploring the dam and all the amazing creatures they found beneath the surface.

20141209 Minibeasts day with Kentucky School. Unfortunately I was so involved in this part of the morning that I didn’t get any photographs of the kids exploring the dam and all the amazing creatures they found beneath the surface.

Nature Activities: Water bug resources

press on the links below to open pdf’s with information on various water insects.

Buglopedia – click on highlighted word to open pdf

Buglopedia

Buglopedia – first page of the above pdf

Bug detective Guide – click on highlighted word to open pdf

Water Bugs Detectives

Water Bugs Detectives – first page of the above pdf

I found out that there are fresh water relations to the jellyfish in our dams – polyps. Mostly they are mistaken for water plants but they are actually arthropods (animals without backbones).

Below: Investigating the Living Systems to find out who and what was living there. Also an opportunity to see how the systems worked and provided shelter, water/moisture, food for all sorts of creatures. The kids were amazed by how many slugs were in there and the different varieties (we found on the internet a giant hot pink slug, that lives on Mount Kaputar, it is worth checking out http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/wildlife/2013/06/the-giant-pink-slugs-of-mount-kaputar).

20141209 Minibeasts day with Kentucky School. Pete asking questions of the kids about various insects and creatures.

20141209 Minibeasts day with Kentucky School. Pete asking questions of the kids about various insects and creatures.

Below: Pete shows the kids how moisture is collected in the newspaper and provides food, moisture and shelter for various creatures in the fertility systems.

20141209 Pete shares about the basics of a loving eco-system, food, shelter, water/moisture and demonstrates using the living systems how this works in practice. (Minibeasts day with Kentucky School)

20141209 Pete shares about the basics of a loving eco-system, food, shelter, water/moisture and demonstrates using the living systems how this works in practice. (Minibeasts day with Kentucky School)

Below: the kids explore the living systems and see what they can find. We speculated at what animals may have made or live in the holes we found in the living systems.

20141209 Minibeasts day with Kentucky School. Kids checking out a swale and what is living there. We had just had rain.

20141209 Minibeasts day with Kentucky School. Kids checking out a swale and what is living there. We had just had rain.

Below: more exploring and investigation

20141209 Minibeasts day with Kentucky School. Kids checking out the swales and living systems for new discoveries and who might live there.

20141209 Minibeasts day with Kentucky School. Kids checking out the swales and living systems for new discoveries and who might live there.

Pete and I had a most enjoyable day hanging out with kids and investigating insects.

We are keen to do more of these days for schools, kids and families who would like to learn and discover more about the natural environment. So if you are interested, please contact us to arrange a day of fun exploration, investigation and discovering all sorts of things that you may, or may not have seen before.

We will also put up any open days on the events page so check it out in the new year and come along if you desire.

Lastly, If you are an expert on insects and creatures and would like to come and hang out and share your knowledge and expertise, we would love to learn from you! Please contact us.

Soul Experiment Series: Piggy Bumps

Posted on by
Reply
piggy bumps/God’s ploughs – pigs
We have some friends in the animal kingdom who are reflecting to us and showing us about our soul injuries. The creatures we are talking about are Pigs. The kids love the pigs, they are cute and funny and there are heaps on our place. They are excellent ploughs and create fabulous maddocked areas all ready for planting. We were driving around the property the other day and going over their earth works which Izabella named ‘piggy bumps’.
pig tracks
A little background on the pigs:
Pigs are an introduced species in Australia and unless domesticated and being bred for meat are regarded as feral and are shot religiously, feral animals in Australia are culled by law. In fact our nearest little biggish town is renowned for being the capital of the pig hunter. We periodically have calls from people who want to come and shoot the pigs and other feral or ‘pest’ animals on the property. Unfortunately what we are doing by shooting the ‘problem’ is preventing the Law of Attraction and exasperating the problem, here’s how: When we shoot the pigs (or any animal) the emotion that drives that actually causes the pigs to replicate like wildfire. The more we attack them the more they’ll replicate (see loving eco systems talks for more detailed information).
An aside: We did a course a short while back on animal rehabilitation and it is recommended that any non native animal brought in injured or found needs to be destroyed – put down/killed – you are not to rehabilitate them as you are not supposed to release them back into the wild – you can keep them in enclosures if you want to but it was not recommended. This felt really off to us as it is just reinforcing the emotions that are creating the problems in the first place. It was an eye opener though to our own personal desires and desire as a nation to eradicate the effects of our creations rather than deal with the causes.
For the last five or so years we have stopped shooting any animals on the place and begun looking at what our souls are creating and what the animals are reflecting. We believe that animals reflect us – humans – thus their behaviour is directly linked to us. Unfortunately the more they are attacked and shot the more they breed and the more they destroy, they are aggressive animals rather than passive and go into overdrive breeding wise when attacked (refer to loving eco system talks for more detailed information on aggressive organisms and why they do this.) We are noticing that many of the introduced so called ‘feral’ animals do this in comparison to the native animals that actually do not prolifically breed when attacked.
So how does this relate to us? We have been looking at why this happens and why we have attracted it into our lives. Firstly we found out that we do not love all God’s creatures equally. In each of the four souls on the property have favourites and treat different creatures differently. Pigs have been killed and are deemed a pest. When we stopped the contract shooting of pigs on the property we began enjoying the pigs, (they are like barrels on legs, very quiet and really amusing and funny when you come across them) but the emotions have not completely healed/changed within us. There are still fears amongst other things. When we heal the errors within us the pigs will not feel the need to attack the land or breed as rapidly and intensively as they are now. They are showing us things that we may not have seen otherwise, reflecting a whole heap inside of our souls we need to heal.
Recently we haven’t found them so amusing and realise we still have issues to work through in regards to the favouritism emotions and how we feel about ‘feral’, domesticated, wild, native, all different species of creature.

We went out to Standbye paddock a couple of months ago (one of the Summerfest project sites) and we were quite simply devastated to say the least. In fact we felt like giving it all up and that the whole world was working against us. We felt that everything we create gets destroyed and that it was a waste of everyone’s time who helped out if it was going to be all ruined.
Our friends the pigs had been in the paddock and literally dug up dam walls, trees, rooted through newspaper, everything had been foraged. Physically we could say that is the moist parts, etc etc, BUT we went a little deeper and had our beautiful friends visiting, Jesus and Mary, who were able to tell us exactly what in our soul was creating this (as we did not want to see it ourselves at the time and had gone into self punishment and shutdown numb mode for a time) What a gift from AJ and Mary!!.
We have emotions within us of feeling that:
  • Things that we love and create get destroyed,
  • Why even do anything if it is going to all get ruined
  • and the feeling that if we involve others in projects here we are to blame for the loss of their time and effort.
  • How we feel we are to blame when we are attacked and somehow we must have done something wrong and it is our fault
  • Our willingness to accept attack and our unwillingness to feel the grief of being attacked (by someone, something, spirits) causes more attack.

These were a few of the emotions exposed within us for us to feel through which brought us closer to the stuff inside of our souls that needs to be healed in order to care  for the land and animals in our care more effectively.

Jesus had also suggested fencing the areas we were planting down but we chose not too, thinking that it was only the sheep that would be a problem and we would solve that by keeping them out of the paddock. The irony is we thought fences control the sheep when it is actually our souls and this goes the same for the pigs. We are missing a big truth about our soul and how powerful it is. Jesus saw much more than we did and we did not choose to follow his direction on this one and thus set ourselves up to be open to self punishment which we ended up going into with the damage that was done.
We did not see the wild animals as under our control. We saw the fences as the method of control not our souls and the piggies showed us this loud and clear.
We learnt some valuable lessons:
  • Don’t be afraid to see my soul’s true condition at the time and make the appropriate compensation in love, for its condition with as much effort as possibly can at the time.
  • Know I can’t trust my feelings while I have injuries and errors around certain things. If I know I need time to deal with the feelings/emotions and if I have not dealt with them then make some compensatory effect that is loving that gives me time to deal with the feelings while still allowing for the growth to occur.
  • Everything is not always our fault. We are not responsible for everything that goes wrong. Everyone who works on the property contributes to what happens it is a collective law of attraction the areas that have had the gift of volunteers and our time.
  • It has not been a waste of time. It was an awesome and valid project that has highlighted areas where we need to patch up ‘holes’ and feel through emotions that are out of harmony with Love and Truth.
  • Find the reason WHY these things happen so we can feel through the emotions within us and no longer have the holes that allow the attack in the first place.
  • Pray for a willingness to see the things we do not want to see or ‘cannot’ see, if we cannot see them we cannot heal them. So grow the desire to see everything about yourself ( I reckon I need to grow some big humility for this one!!!)
  • Keep working on our favouritism emotions and get to a place where we love every creature equally (this needs to extend to loving every one of our brothers and sisters equally and all God’s creations equally. At this time we do not.)
reptile heaven piggy digging
reptile heaven piggy diggying
It happened again on the 21st May at the bottom of reptile heaven. It was triggered by a specific emotion or set of emotions at a specific time and the end result was what is seen in the photos. The beauty of this is that we could trace it back to what we were feeling just before it happened. The pigs have never been in this close to the houses and where we live. We were shocked and devastated again, highlighting that the emotions mentioned above have not yet been healed.
We thought you may be interested in how the soul affects everything around it and how our soul attracts events to highlight things we don’t want to see, God is continuously wanting to refine us in Love and to teach us about growing closer to her. This is an example of that process and how when the injuries exist within us they are played out through the Law of Attraction. It also highlights how our souls influence every creature around us.
Reptile heaven Piggy bumps (or pig digging/destruction):

Aviary Update

Posted on by
Reply
There have recently been new arrivals in the Aviary including some little fluffy additions also. They are most gorgeous, and facinating. They are so small and trusting and just hang out in the bottom of the aviary seeming to sleep until food is brought to them or they want to feed. We are enjoying observing and learning about these little guys.
The folk at the Aviary now include:
Blue Faced Parrot Finches
Diamond Firetail Finches
Masked Finches
Painted Firetail Finches
Red Star Finches
Yellow Billed Longtail Finches
Yellow Star Finches
Zebra Finches
Some images of the aviary are below.
Painted Firetail & Yellow Billed Longtail

Yellow Billed Long Tails
Yellow Billed Longtail Finch baby (we think) hanging out so still and unmoving (sleeping?). Notice it has it’s eye closed.
Zebra Finch
Zebra Finch Fledgling (Baby Fluffball)
Diamond Firetail Pair
Red Star Finch
Yellow Star Finch
Painted Firetail

Bees & Thoughts on Insects and the Smaller Creatures

Posted on by
Reply
We think bees* and flies, ants** (waste warriors), bugs, mosquitos, etc, etc, insects and creatures of all types, shapes and sizes are really very clever, very cool and very interesting. The amount of things they do are amazing. They are so talented and we don’t think that we would survive without them. We feel it is important to provide for the bottom of the food chain and all creatures***.
Where would we be without the insects, microbes, little soil warriors? The worms, soil makers and all those in between. They break down our waste, organic matter and are beautiful recycliers. They pollinate, clean up, and have perfect symbiotic relationships with various other living creatures and flora.
They facinate and intrigue us and we love learning about what they do, how they do it, their purposes, roles, and their individual talents and the wonders that they are.
Since becoming interested in insects and the smaller creatures and life creators we have discovered some amazing species. We don’t think they are new to Earth (we know they are not), but they are new to us and they are beautiful and awe inspiring to observe and learn about.
We were talking to a friend of ours the other day and he has seen blue bees.
We have (for the first time) seen blue/green iridescent flies with black and white polka dot undersides and yellow heads, purple iridescent ants with blue legs, rainbow bugs – jewel beetles and christmas beetles, soldier beetles; there are mud wasps working with Izabella, Charlie and Archie in their mud pits and building perfect mud castles on the underside of our veranda and in the kids curtains. The kids love bugs and are always finding species to come and show us. We are beginning to love bugs of all kinds, shapes and sizes.
There are so many wonders in this world. So much to explore, discover and enjoy. I am grateful to our creator for making such diversity, perfection and wondrous creatures so perfectly and precicely.
If we (the human soul) are the pinnacle of God’s creation imagine what we are like in all our glorious perfection****- something to aim for, smile.
Bee and Fly collecting from the sunflowers
Bee Day (one of Michael’s and the kids passions) – checking bees and setting up a new hive for a swarm
Bees checking out their new home
Check out the website http://www.aussiebee.com.au/beesinyourarea.html#locationtable for more native Australian bee information.
Golden honey from domesticated bees
A wild bee entering it’s hive in a hollow in a manna gum near the creek
Wild bee hive found in the paddock. How amazing are bees to build such perfect honey
comb from scratch.

Really God has created such beautiful, perfect, precise, amazing, awe inspiring creatures both great and small! Think of all the things, all the creatures we have no idea about and yet they are working in perfect harmony all around us doing all sorts of things that I often feel we take totally for granted and are often in total ignorance about the how’s and why’s of. Nature is definitely one beautiful way to explore and discover more about God and God’s perfect creations. Tread lightly and carefully on your discoveries. smile.

 
* A really cool Australian bee website is http://www.aussiebee.com.au/beesinyourarea.html#locationtable it has some great photos and basic information on lots of types of bees.

**Check out Mary’s blog for some really interesting images of insects in extreme flood conditions and a documentary on ants who are seriously amazing!!

***We still are working through some feelings we have around certain insects, creatures and bugs that attack things but realise that their behaviour is to do with our emotions and projections towards them rather than just an un warranted intent to attack. They wouldn’t attack if they felt loved, ‘safe’ protected, provided for and as important as every other creature in the environment. At the moment things are still out of balance for us. We are working to love all creatures equally. Observing ourselves in this experiment is very enlightening!
 
****We are not there yet by any means, but sometimes I like to wonder and imagine what the possibilities of my soul are if I am stretched all the way to being at-one-with-God, Wow! (I don’t think my imaginings even come close).  I love wondering and entertaining thoughts about the possibilities of creation in nature of a soul who is in a state of perfection!