I like to start out my blog posts with a pretty picture, even if the picture doesn’t relate to the blog post topic.

Today’s pretty picture is of my trout lilies. Sorry about the full sun exposure, but I’m not sorry it’s a sunny day!

I do wish these trout lilies, Erythronium americanum, had been blooming on Wednesday. They would have made a nice topic for Wildflower Wednesday, hosted by Gail at Clay and Limestone.

She featured Sedum ternatum on her blog post this month. It’s a native sedum that does well in moist, shady spots.

You cannot see it in the picture of my trout lilies, but just off to the left, I also have a nice patch of Sedum ternatum.

You also cannot see the native giant white trilliums (Trillium grandiflorum) in bloom nearby, to the right.

That’s three native wildflowers are blooming in the shade of the native honey locust, Gleditsia triancanthos.

If I had been on the ball, and the flowers had all been blooming, I could have written a nice post about them for Wildflower Wednesday.

Instead, here it is a few days later and I’m posting about my gardening knife.  I lost it for awhile.

Spoiler alert! I eventually found it.

When I lost it, I had to get my back up gardening knife, the one I bought when I thought I’d lost my main gardening knife for good a while back. I was convinced at the time that my main gardening knife was buried in one of several bags of garden refuse headed to the curb to be burned by the city.  Don’t judge. The trash was mostly weeds. I send weeds to the fiery furnace, not the compost pile, don’t you?

Anyway, I don’t like my back up knife as well as my main knife so I kept looking for for the main knife. I checked the basket by the back door, where I throw tools when I come in from the back garden. I checked the garage shelf by the door into the house. I checked the garage shelf by the overhead garage door.

I checked a few other places where I sometimes toss tools when I am done with them. Then I looked around the garden where I remembered last using it.

High and low and all around I looked. I could not find my main gardening knife.

At this point, you might be thinking, “Carol, you need fewer places where you keep tools and then they’d be easier to find.”

Don’t judge.  Where were we?

To continue this story… The whole time while I was looking, I was blaming the garden fairies for the loss of my main gardening knife. But, to keep my momentum going in the garden, I also began to use my back up gardening knife, even though I don’t like it as well as my main gardening knife.

Then today, while setting the patio up for summer, I finally found my main gardening knife.

It was on the window ledge. Right where I presume I left it. Or where the garden fairies put it when they lost interest in keeping it from me, once they saw I was moving on with my back up gardening knife.

I should have looked on that window ledge earlier. After all, a window ledge was my dad’s favorite place to put his gardening tools. We could always find his pruners and trowel on one particular window ledge if he wasn’t using them. I’ll have to remember to look on my window ledge sooner next time I misplace my main gardening knife. Maybe that’s where the garden fairies put them when they find them?

Now, where is my back up gardening knife?