I'm not sure I'd consider this a "friend", I like cicadas. It's not summer until I hear them singing. I found a hole between 2 slabs of concrete and large stone, and was hoping for something interesting, like a snake, so started watching it a lot. The hole is about 2" dia.

Instead I eventually caught something struggling to get to the hole dragging something bigger. I never even heard of them before, but it's a Cicada Killer Wasp. I've tried everything (flooding it daily with water, trying to get the dirt to harden by tamping it down daily after watering, spraying peppermint spray and diatomaceous earth into the hole, etc.) to get rid of them, yet every year they come back to the same spot.

I guess I should be thankful I don't have them everywhere in the lawn coming in and out all day.

Don't try to get rid of them. They will not hurt you at all. But they are catching, laying eggs on, very bad insects that cause damage to the greenery around us.
Not everything that looks fearsome to us needs to be destroyed.

And they can sting and leave a fearsome welt; best to leave them alone.

The spot they picked though is the most heavy traffic area for me in the yard, right under one of the garbage bins and next to the faucet I use constantly for watering the back, 1.5' from the back of the house, and about 10-15' from my lawn chair where I live all summer. I've read about people having swarms of them and I really don't want it to grow into something like that since they come back to the same spot every year.

The odd thing is there are no trees near that spot, the closest thing is a 6' mock orange about 15' away, so I'm not sure why they keep coming back to it. There are old established trees in the neighborhood so we do have the typical amount of annual cicadas, but not enough to ever see them. They have to be dragging the cicadas some long distance to the spot.

I'd still opt to get rid of them because of how close they are to my daily activity and next to the house. I figure it's just a matter of time before I get stung.

Listen, the last thing that a Cicada Killer wants to do is to have a close confrontation with this large, scary, unknown beast walking around their territory.
They are solely concentrated upon producing the next generation. They hunt their prey, they sting it, they drag it down a previously dig tunnel to an egg chamber. Here their offspring hatch and consume the host insect.
Do people get stung? Oh I am sure that a few do. These Cicada Killers look so fierce. Many a person has said to me, "Just look at the size of that stinger!" When I explained that it is NOT a stinger but an ovipositor, that is where the eggs emerge from, they would tell me, "No, that is the stinger!" But because we as humans have been conditioned to believe that, we are unwilling to consider anything else.
But if you chase them, swing something repeatedly at them, even knocking them down, you may get stung. They are not "programmed to sting humans" but humans are programmed to hate most insects that are banded yellow and black, yellow and brown, they just have to be bad! They just have to.

Bill. Almost all wild creatures really don't want direct confrontation with us. A few exceptions exist, though. It seems that if there are any yellow jackets anywhere nearby when I walk out my door, they head straight for me and kamikaze dive bomb me! I fish and hike a lot, and have run up on many of three out of the four poisonous snakes here. Of the three rattlers and copperheads usually stand down and slither away. However, cottonmouths are extremely aggressive, often to the point that they are actively chasing me and I am running away Helter skelter. Had one run me into a creek from the creek bank, left me treading water with my fishing pole held over my head. At other times I would be fishing on the lake banks and cottonmouths would be swimming along, see me, and start swimming my way, sometimes attacking my line in the water and even coming up on the bank, causing me to scramble to get out of there. I take a big, long stick with me fishing now.
Very territorial. I've always said that if I am ever bitten by a poisonous snake, it would be a cottonmouth! These are only personal observations. :lol:

Well I certainly understand snakes more then wasps but I have never had the pleasure of being up close and personal with a Cotton mouth! Aggressive little buggers? Huh?
The closest I ever got was in a County Park in Fort Myers called 6-mile Cypress Slough Preserve. They had a mile of elevated boardwalk and I spotted a small one sunning on a log. And then another larger one yards away in the water.
A visitor walked by and I pointed them out. "Oh, they are Banded Water Snakes, not Cottonmouths!" Oh really I said. I tried to explain the field marks but he wasn't having any of that!
" My mind is made up, don't confuse me with the facts!" Type of person. I thought, man, what a dope! A little so called knowledge can be very dangerous!! People like that though, I wonder if they ever get bitten?

I don't know what in the world I did when fiddling with this one, but please humor me and let's all pretend it's arty:

I am not going to humor you because it is a nice image. You are not happy with it?
Asa, in the event that you are not entirely happy with this may I make a suggestion? On first glance your image appears to be a horizontal one! I ask you to consider it as a VERTICAL and see if it doesn't change the dynamic completely.
Take off half the top green. Next crop the green on the right side so that the flower stalk almost arises out of the corner.
As a last step, take off about 30-40% of the green from the left side. If my calculations are correct, the chest/thorax of the bee should be about dead center of the image. Then the bee on an angle in a vertical image adds a lot. The bee will have considerably more green in front of him then behind.
Images where you have things arising from a corner are more dynamic I think. Plus I really feel that this image as a vertical works a whole lot more then it does as a horizontal.
If the changes look better to you then great but if you like it better as a horizontal, then cool 😎! Even though your camera took this as a horizontal, try flipping the camera 90 degrees and shoot as a vertical.
In my opinion, I just see this as a simple cropping issue. Try it vertical and see if it doesn't improve!
Regardless it is a great image.

Bill, I wasn't arguing much with composition. I prefer the landscape, generally. I think you've got a good eye and thought I'd take a swing at what you suggested. I like the last one best and it might be better than the crop I started with. Vertical isn't my go-to and I've probably missed lots in the way of composition not considering it much.


The thing that I was really having trouble with, and hence called the outcome pretend arty, was the mess I made of the colors while editing. I tend to think that "less is more". And it's pretty easy to go over the top. That said, there are lots of photos I've liked that were intentionally pushed past the threshold. And the editing became part of the art itself. I'm not skilled enough to make that leap consistently - and especially with a consistent eye or vision.

This is what I started with out of the camera. I'd really lost a lot of color and highlights, I guess, by overexposing the shot initially. And I was trying to rescue it. The bee looks good, but the flower is just blown out. Here:


Thanks for the advice. It would serve me well to consider the vertical more often for sure.

Oh okay. I get it! But for my taste, i
Love the bottom image now. The vertical bee on an angle creates so much more interest for me. In my camera club, we referred to this as more dynamic! Dynamic creates tension or more interest in the images.
But yes, in most editing programs your can crop, erase, and restore to your hearts content but just consider vertical is all I am suggesting. I would hazard a guess to say I print and use about 1/3 of my stuff as a vertical. Give or take.
I do not find the colors offensive. Once in a while in the club we would see an image where the green grass was so over the top that it looked like a shocking green, an electric green! Something you knew that you had never seen. Or such a crazy sky that really wasn't blue anymore but violet or purple. But generally if the bee looks reasonable, the flower becomes secondary.

I agree with Bill. I'm looking at the bee first! The flower is a pretty prop for me. Yes, I do look at the flower, but only in relation to the bee.

Bill, don't know if cottonmouths everywhere are as aggressive as here. Laughed about the guy who couldn't tell the difference between water snakes and cotton mouths. Like some people I know: they think all snakes are poisonous snakes! Or visa versa. As to who gets bitten by cottonmouths, that would be me! Because I fish places I know are covered up with them.

That's where the fish are! A lot of the aggression attributed to Cottonmouths is due to them being attracted to the scent of fish. They are a bold lot however and won't let the presence of a human deter them from a potential meal. I generally like snakes, amazing creatures, but I just don't trust a moccasin.
I've heard lots of stories about them falling from trees into boats but they don't climb so those tales can usually be attributed to water snakes.

I found a snake someone had killed at work a couple days ago, very unseasonable. I think it may have been a pine woods snake but they aren't supposed to be in my area but the borders of their range are very close.

Well a little knowledge can be dangerous in the hands of the stupid. But I chuckle to myself at the rigidity to change if presented with contradicting knowledge.
Simply amazing!🤪

I've never heard or seen a Cicada killer, interesting, but did look up and Florida has a species... Sphecius hogardii. Reading says the stinger looks wicked but really just feels like a pin prick, also not aggressive. I'm not a barefoot girl, I always at least wear flip flops in the garden, unlike my FL cracker husband .

I've never had a snake chase me. I can tell you I'm amazed at snakes, respect them tremendously when hiking. I remember in GA mountains hiking down in the Tallulah Gorge with my three boys and another family. We all were jumping from one boulder to another, my eldest son stood between the two and helped the younger boys to get from one rock to the other, I was the last one to go across. Once my son was back with us, he said he noticed the rattlesnake coiled down under the rock whole time, he didn't see it until it was his turn to jump. Sheesh.

I've been snorkling in the springs and had a moccasin come right up to my face, it turned and took off, good thing I had the snorkel in my mouth or the whole county would have heard my scream. There are lots more snake stories but I'll not bore you all.

A guest that's really not all that welcome. But one who might also rightly argue, "hey, I live here, too!!".

So there's that. Unless the stinging nasties are absolutely right in the way (like in a raised bed by the porch or under the rung of a needed ladder), we try to figure out how to live and let live as best we can.

In other news, blame BigBill for the verticalness of this submission

Wow, Asa, really neat. The colors of the wasp(?) really pop against that bright green of the plant.


Probably posted this pic before. A where's Elmo kind of pic. this particular zinnia variety a sure winner for all the bees and butterflies last year. Called Forecast by Burpees. Available on Burpees seed rack. Go to Wal Mart the other day and got my new seed just in time. Two packs left, and now their mine!

Hey, I like it as a vertical!

Nice wasp Asa.