My suburban garden is tastefully landscaped with a wide variety of old boards, bricks, tiles, etc. This may not be to everyone's taste but on a day when I don't fancy travelling far, a short garden safari always yields a wide variety of Arachnids and Molluscs. A few days ago I found a thriving colony of Yellow Meadow Ants under one of the bricks. We've got quite a lot of Yellow Meadow Ants in the garden, and while I approve of them in theory, in practice our relationship is one of friction. Over the last few years they have greatly increased in our "meadow". I'm happy they're there, but they are taking over and their antheaps are real ankle breakers so they have to be dealt with. Under one of the old bricks, I'm quite happy to let them be. But when I went back to find a few for a nice warm indoors macro shoot, they'd clearly taken umbrage at me lifting "their" brick and they'd vanished. I had to dig to find this lone remainder. He stared a me angrily and would not stay still. I chased him around abortively trying to get a focus stack. Nature and the photographer in imperfect harmony.

Out in the garden, the ants hatch their plans and they wait....