Have you found TED? Here is what their website says: TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started
out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three
worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since
then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED
Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in
Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open
Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year's
TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize.

What I can tell you is that I've had mind-expanding insights while listening to TED talks. The one below is by Alain de Botton whose book, The Art of Travel, is one of my very favorite reads. In this talk he made me re-examine what I think about success.

I took a lot of pictures of the yard and one of them was of this lovely, red zinnia. I grew a whole lot of them from seeds and I'm going to remember to do that every year from now on.

I thought I would crop the image to see if it was better. What do you think?

Doesn't this make you wonder about cropping your quilt blocks!

My friend, Laurie, has a volunteer vine growing out of her compost pile. Is she growing squash or gourds? Either is good, but we're not sure whether to try cooking these or not.

I've got yellow squash but it's the wartiest squash I've ever seen!

If you are not from the south, you may have only heard about fire ants. These ants make a distinctive looking mound – that you don't always see in time. Here's one at the base of a big rock in my front yard.

If you poke the mound, thousands of tiny ants flood out. If you aren't paying attention, they climb up your leg and then they all bite you at once. It feels like fire, hence the name "fire ants". I took a stick and drew across the bed…

… I hope you can see the fire ants. I moved away pretty quickly.

Click on the picture and I think a bigger one will open for you. The little white ovals are eggs. You can see the ants better on the rock. I have at least 3 of these fire ant beds out front and I have to watch my grandkids so that they don't get into them.

I was taking pictures of my yard and happened to catch this bumblebee in flight. It makes me happy every time I look at it. FYI – the flowers are 2 different kinds of salvia. They look a lot like lavender, the flower all summer and the bees and butterflies love them.

The rehearsal dinner is one week away! I went to work yesterday on the centerpieces. I saw some centerpieces recently that mixed tall sticks in glass vases with short logs that were drilled to hold votive candles. I liked the little logs a lot  and decided to use that idea. Steve cut several cedar logs…

He then cut them with the miter saw to make them level and 10"-12" tall. He stripped the bark by hand and cleaned them up with a wire brush.

I cut the daisies to the correct height and we stapled them to one side of each log. Actually, Steve stapled them.

I tied a cute yellow tulle bow around each flower-studded log. I've borrowed some mirrored tiles that are nice. I've got some pretty acrylic "diamonds" that would add some wedding-flavored bling at the base of each centerpiece.

Or I might not use the mirrors. When all of the centerpieces are on all the tables I'll be able to see which what looks best.

Lemons scattered on the table around the centerpieces could be fun! I didn't think that up all by myself – I saw it at A Cup Of Jo.