Oh nooo...

I may have lost my knife.

You don't understand. This is tragic. I always have my knife with me. I use it for things. I've had it forever (or at least since I was... in university? High school? I think I was a teenager still when my parents gave it to me), and Victorinox doesn't make that model anymore.

That knife has been used in the field, around work, to... um... open wine bottles at a conference when no one thought to bring a corkscrew...

I'm very knife dependent.I know that it probably sounds weird for someone like me to carry around a knife, but it's a tool. It gets used daily. It goes in my pocket every morning. It's not in my pocket now.

What'll I do?



Well, I suppose I'll be looking very carefully around the parking lot, my car, and my apartment parking space to see if it got dropped sometime this morning. Then I'll check my key bin to see if maybe I just forgot to put it in my pocket (HIGHLY unlikely). And if all else fails?

I guess I buy another knife.



It just won't be the same, though.

All of this knife trauma (bet that's the first time you've heard that phrase without any actual injuries being involved) has kind of killed the original intent of this post, so I think I'll just end by explaining the pointless photos. On the top, a couple of the dead plants on my balcony. There are lots of dead plants on my balcony, since I purposely do minimal cleanup in the fall. And why? The photo on the left -- taken through a screen door and a window, in case you were wondering about the muted colours -- explains why. Wildlife loves dead plants in the winter. I constantly get chickadees and nuthatches checking for leftover seeds. They go to my feeder too, of course, but they always check out the plants first. Natural foods are always preferred, because birds aren't as silly as humans.

There was a pair of Downy Woodpeckers on the balcony when I took this photo, but the female wasn't terribly cooperative so you're only getting a look at the male. You can tell by the red patch on the back of his head, if you wondered.

Nature in the city. Always a good thing.



Too bad it can't bring back my knife.