Yellow-legged mud-dauber wasp. Every day I stop by the garden my students created and have tended for the last seven years, to do some work and to see what’s in there. It’s a small garden but it is full of life. It’s slated to become a parking lot soon, so I continue to show up, to gather seeds, to move the shallow-rooted perennials to whatever refuge I can find for them, and to gather memories and records of the lives that live in and visit that garden. One of my frequent practices is nature journaling, combining images with words, and allowing my wonder to take specific form in words and numbers. Here is a new species, one I think I am seeing for the first time in the garden today.

A detailed watercolor and ink sketch depicts a yellow-legged mud-dauber wasp perched on green leaves, accompanied by descriptive handwritten notes about the insect and its behavior.