On a smaller scale

It's been a lovely warm afternoon for late February so I've been weeding the gravel bed that makes up our front garden. Dandelions and thistles are not exactly photogenic so I only took the camera out for the "before" and "after" shots that would convince me that I'd made a difference. I was glad I had it though, when I found this little ladybird on my gravel:

I couldn't catch the orange centipede I saw because it was too fast and disappeared under the gravel before I could find it in the viewfinder. However, this little shell in the flower bed wasn't going anywhere:

You would think that a skeleton leaf might behave a little better for a photographer but that was not the case. First, it insisted on being too well camouflaged against the gravel and the stones of the wall to show up. Then, when I found a white slab that would help to show it off, the wind kept picking my leaf up and trying to blow it away. Finally, I brought it in and put it on a slate table mat where it posed beautifully for me: