My stubbornness knows no bounds it seems, and it was particularly kicked into high gear this morning as I set out to do what I wanted to do yesterday. Which, if you remember, was to simply pick some of my lovely sunflowers to get some seeds and also a few to put in a vase and maybe dry some for fall decorating.

The good news is, I did manage to get a few, but not without coming closer to death than I am comfortable with, despite taking full precaution and doing my best to mitigate the risks.

Why, oh why, don’t I just listen to my dear, sweet, patient husband when he tells me to wait for him to do things for me? Oh, that’s right, because I am stubborn to the core.

So, as soon as he left for work, I put on a long sleeve shirt, my thick overalls, a hat, some gloves, my N95 mask (because the smoke from the Lake Tahoe fires is now choking the valley over here!), my sunglasses and my heavy boots. I felt like a warrior princess as I took a deep breath to calm my nerves and headed out on my quest for sunflowers.

I even made the sign of the cross as I left the safety of my house, even though I’m not Catholic. I figured every little bit helps!

It’s not like I’m asking for a miracle here. I just don’t want to die a slow, painful death by a million wasp stings at seven o’clock in the morning before I’ve even gotten a full cup of coffee in me! Is that too much to ask?!

Apparently it is. As soon as I reached the sunflower patch I could see the enemy army was already in position. Just about every single flower had a wasp somewhere on it. Some were more visible than others and some weren’t visible at all. I realized that since we killed off all of the nests we could find here they’ve decided to just sleep on the flowers!

Ugh!!

The good thing was it was still cool enough out that they weren’t at all active and most of them just ignored me completely as I carefully selected the ones that were wasp-less.

Well, at first.

Once I began collecting them and disturbed the area enough they began to buzz about angrily, forcing me to retreat in case one of them found a chink in my armor. They are very good at that!

I had clipped enough to fill a vase for the table and made my way back inside, carefully double checking to make sure no enemy soldiers had evaded my line of sight and I felt pretty confident that every single flower was wasp free and safe to bring in.

So I laid them on the table and went to get a vase, removing my armor and letting my guard down.

Boy was that a mistake!

As soon as I began arranging them, one popped out from deep inside the petals of one of the blooms and scared the living daylights out of me. I jumped up, still holding tight to the stem, and ran outside with it.

Then I proceeded to stomp the life out of both the sunflower and the wasp.

It didn’t even come close to stinging me but it did nearly scare me to death, so I count that as another wasp-induced near death experience.

The good news is I did manage to get a lovely arrangement with the flowers that I picked (minus the one I stomped).

I did get some good pictures of those murdering little demons from hell, too, at least….

I think I’ll take the hub’s advice and just wait for him to get the rest for me. He isn’t afraid to get stung and, unlike me, he isn’t at risk of dying prematurely if he does!