A Mound

In some of the drier, slightly sloping and less used areas of the croft fields one finds rounded mounds of earth, tussocks, often populated by a limited number of plants - including, in this case....

....one with a very pretty pale blue flower and....

....what looks like a sedum.

Investigating one of these the other day, poking around to try to get some pictures, I discovered why the plants looked so healthy.

The mound is, of course, an ants' nest, a red ants' nest, and red ants don't take too kindly to being disturbed, much to the advantage of the plants which are growing on it.