my friend michele presented me with this gift to STILL blog, from her grandfather’s farm in southern minnesota. it’s the clever nest of a female mud dauber wasp. there is some painful serendipity involved in the timing of this gift, because just this week i was moving some firewood and as i began to lift the bottom row of logs, i was swiftly and simultaneously stung by four wasps defending an unseen buried nest.  i ended up displaying what the medical websites universally called a “large local allergic reaction,” with a lot of heat, swelling, redness, and itching. I’m feeling fine now, but it has made me wary of all wasps, even the supposedly benign, though quite wicked looking, mud dauber.

pemberton, minnesota