I stepped on a wasp

Nightfall Cherrywood
acrylic on canvas
8 x 8 inches
Barbara Muir © 2009
(I often take my photos at night when the work
is completed. I've noticed that if I retake
the shot outside in daylight it's a
whole different image. I hope you still like it. I do.)

Hi everyone,

I was all excited by my yellow jacket experiment. I was
thinking about my mother who trained as a bacteriologist
and maintains a healthy curiosity and respect for
how nature works to this day. Her conversations so
frequently begin with how interesting it is that
a certain animal behaves in a certain way, or how
people don't realize x or y. So today between
getting paint at the paint store, blowing up
reference shots at the copy shop, and painting,
I put out two new bowls of sugar water for the
wasps to see which they preferred. The clear or the
blue? Guess what? They loved the blue. But that
was my second blue glass bowl of sugar water
because the first spilled all over the kitchen and
that made me clean the kitchen floor.

I was still high spirited taking the sugar water
soaked doormat down to the laundry room, and
cleaning it off, and still cheerful when I took it out to lie
on the hot interlock paving behind our house to dry,
but as I stepped over the wasps on the downstairs
outdoor landing in my bare feet, I stepped on a wasp,
and may I say that still hurts.

My curiosity was entirely satisfied then. I
sat on the front porch painting the scene you
see here during the creeping dusk praying no one
in my neighbourhood would see me because I
was trying not to cry! That wasp sting hurt!
And many people walked by at the uncharacteristic
hour. The street was like a party of people
all noticing me painting, and asking questions.
Meanwhile my foot hurt like the dickens, and
as soon as Steven came home, I went inside with
him and I did cry a bit. He cleaned my foot,
dug around with tweezers trying to find the
stinger, put some anti-sting ointment on it,
and we drank a little champagne
we found in the fridge. I do feel much better now.

And I like the painting I did as the late summer
sun was setting.

Have a-happy-to-experiment day.