An Interlude

 I've decided to take some time off from this blog. Given the time of year, I can't say for how long–we are approaching the time of year when it's too cold for bugs. That has not been the case the last few days, of course, but aside from the ones attracted to the chrysanthemums in the rock garden I haven't been finding many bugs anyway. That is part of the reason I am taking a break. This takes a lot of time, and it's not worth it if I end up with nothing to show for it. Most days I don't even have a Backyard Bug of the Day to show. I have other things I need to devote attention to, and so I am going to do that for the time being. If I happen to end up with a picture of a cool bug on some days, I'll post about it. I don't have much to post bug-wise today, but if you're not averse to snakes, stick around for the end of today's blog post.

 After not being seen for a few days, the march flies were back today:

 

Still only males, though.

 I found a strange situation:

It was hard for me to tell what was going on here. It was either two ants playing tug-o-war over another ant, or one ant dragging two ants. 

It got kind of extreme. These are not winter ants, by the way, but since the temperature has now been in the 70s for a few days, I guess the non-winter ants decided they could come back out.

As is now the case every day, most of the bugs I found, in fact, an overwhelming majority of them, were feeding on the chrysanthemums:

It was mostly sweat bees, lots of sweat bees. Every flower had at least once, with a few gnats thrown in here and there.

There were no hover flies today, but there was one stilt bug.

Backyard Reptile of the Day:

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Definitely a front yard reptile, not a backyard reptile, to be accurate. Here it is slithering under the front porch. Garter snake.