Hymenoptera.

There's something kind of, well, acceptable, in a spirit of uneasy coexistence, about having an ant in your back yard. But a member of the Hymenoptera family? I don't know.

This guy was crawling on Rudbeckia 'Cherry Brandy' grown from seed in 2009; I had some limited success with perennials from seed that summer (green thumb), but failed completely last year (black thumb).

We took a long car ride (3300 miles) in September of 2006. I took this--one of my favorite photos from the entire trip--on the side of the road that runs from the town of Antigonish up to Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia.