Hornet's Nest

I've been watching this beautiful wasp's next all summer. It was in a tree outside my office window,

As soon as we had had a few cold nights, I checked to make sure it was empty.  Yup! Nobody home.

[As a side note, I KNEW it was empty, but when I was cutting it down, the tree showered down all these little leaves and when the first one hit me, I admit I did the light fantastic, flailing and slapping, for a minute.]

So I went out with my pruning shears, a trash bag, and an elastic, I put the bag over the nest, clipped the branch , and wrapped the elastic around the top...just as added insurance that there weren't a few sleepy stragglers in there.  Oddly enough, when I unwrapped it later, there were no hornets, but there were numerous Asian Ladybugs. Kinda felt bad about commandeering their winter lodge. 

I find nests like these miraculous. Hornets and wasps just have an overall bad attitude, and yet they create this delicate paper structure, in beautiful blues and browns. And I love that this leaf fell onto the nest in a rainstorm and was absorbed into the paper. 

I never thought about it before but obviously the nests must eventually dissolve in the rain with no one around to repair them. That's why you don't see billions of them around everywhere I guess. Although this year, I've spotted three in my immediate vicinity. I can't remember ever seeing that before. Is Waspmageddon upon us?

Anyway, I thought I would share some of  Mother Nature's art since she is far superior to anything I could do.  What has she created around where YOU are?