Little Greenhouse, Mystery Bugs and Itchy Itchy Spiders!

I went out into the garden today with my camera to see if I could find anything interesting. Lately when possible I have been limiting myself to one spot, I'll just sit/stand there and wait...You'd be surprised how many species are within a square meter of your average garden if your just willing to slow down and wait for them to come to you. The first interesting thing I came across was this small shard of glass. It was tightly pressed into the ground and underneath all these beautiful little plants were growing....a mini-greenhouse!

I then spotted this little guy trundling around and for the life of me couldn't figure out what he was. From far away he appeared to be a caterpillar but when I picked him up I quickly realized he only had 3 pairs of legs so was obviously an insect of some sort. He was a most spectacular shade of blue with yellow/orange spots. I searched online, initially to no avail but eventually after posting the images on a forum found out he was in fact a ladybird in roughly it's mid-larva stage! Well you learn something new everyday. I never knew ladybirds went through such a dramatic level of metamorphosis. 

I also spotted loads of ants, a very old butterfly, sadly in the closing stages of his life, an orange adult ladybird and quite a few spiders. Earlier tonight, I was showing Neen these photos on the computer, she was becoming more and more itchy just looking at them and said unimpressed "Lovely photos, but I really don't want to see pictures of all the creepy things we have in our garden", to which I replied "Technically the spider in this shot is right there" and pointed directly above her head, she looked up to see the very same spider in the exact spot I had photographed him not two hours prior. Naturally she screamed and ran out of the studio!