Moon Flowers and Wasp Stings

While on our recent trip to New Mexico, we went to a park where the landscaping was made up of native plants.  I fell in love with the Moon Flower bushes we saw there.  I forgot to take a picture of them, but here is a picture of what they look like.

This picture is from a website that has more pictures and information about them.

Moon Flowers

I had to have some of these for my garden and made a mental note to buy some seed next spring.  However, as these thoughts were going through my mind, I noticed a seed pod down inside one of the bushes.  What luck!  Here was an easy way to obtain seed for free.  So, into the bush I reached to pick the pod.  The seed pods were covered with bristles and, when my thumb began to hurt, I thought one of them had jabbed me.  However, it was quite painful and the bristles didn't really look that sharp to me.  When I pulled my hand out of the bush, I found a wasp on my thumb!  OUCH

Over the course of the next few minutes, my thumb started swelling and after an hour the back of my hand was swollen, as well.

Here's what my hand is supposed to look like.

It hurt a lot and I got a cold water bottle out of our cooler to hold on the sting.  This helped to relieve the pain and, after a while, it quit hurting so much and just felt stiff and numb.  The next day the swelling was gone, but it itched a lot.

The moral of this story is "Nothing is free!"  I paid the price for these seeds.  All 18 of them!