In the quiet shade of a sun-filled morning, in a year that has just past its Autumnal Equinox, the lady brown-throated Sunbird rests and preens herself beneath the leafy sprinkles of a Dwarf Peacock, while a nearby Jumbo Wax Apple tree displays its nearly ripened offerings to a variety of impatient creatures as they careen confidently on its branches.

In such pristine settings, it does not take more than a narrow modest scrape of lawn hosting flora and fauna to admire and examine the passage of time, and to reflect on the folly of Vanity and the determined industry of Man (as we toil and toss in our sleep), but to what ends?

Ecclesiastes 1:2-11 Nothing Is New and All Is Vanity

Vanity of vanities, the Preacher says. Vanity of vanities. Vanity of vanities. All is vanity! For all his toil, his toil under the sun, what does man gain by it?
A generation goes, a generation comes, yet the earth stands firm for ever. The sun rises, the sun sets; then to its place it speeds and there it rises. Southward goes the wind, then turns to the north; it turns and turns again; back then to its circling goes the wind. Into the sea all the rivers go, and yet the sea is never filled, and still to their goal the rivers go. All things are wearisome. No man can say that eyes have not had enough of seeing, ears their fill of hearing. What was will be again; what has been done will be done again; and there is nothing new under the sun. Take anything of which it may be said, ‘Look now, this is new.’ Already, long before our time, it existed. Only no memory remains of earlier times, just as in times to come next year itself will not be remembered.

Lumix G85; 75-300mm Olympus Zuiko; September 2018.
Jerusalem Bible, 1968 Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday.