Blooms & Buzz

Here are some late summer flowers and their insect friends. In the last few weeks I have been stung about once a week by some sort of critter. A wasp reacted when I was cleaning some daylilies where it must have been hovering in the morning shade. I ran my lawn mower over a yellow jacket nest  and you can believe they did not like that, but I was lucky to escape with only one sting. The visual must have been amusing: Dance of the Yellow Jacket Attack. And finally I was opening a gate and brushed aside a gorgeous plume of goldenrod and got nailed hard by a bumblebee. Can I get a break? For sure I'm watching more carefully now where I put my hands, and tools. The yellow jackets are particularly disturbing to me, they build nests in the ground in a hole, you feel them before you see them, they hover around very busily all day and they will be with us until the first hard frost. That section of the grass will remain unmowed for now.
We need all these critters though.
Yellow jacket larva feed on many crop-damaging insects. Bumblebees and wasps are pollinators, and many wasps and yellow jackets eat aphids, which is always a good thing in my  book.

Here are some bumblebees on  Sedum 'Autumn Joy' in my yard, and a monarch (?)  butterfly caterpillar on some parsley (Petroselinum) at the Demonstration Garden at Ellington Agricultural Center (both in Nashville!). Oh and just a snap of some Spireas in full late summer bloom at a private garden.

PS Though I have never had an adverse reaction to an insect sting I always carry a first aid kit at work, with some benadryl in the meds section.