Shannon Mckinnon

I lament the fact that we get only 90 frost-free days in our area. According to the 2009 Farmer’s Almanac, we were slated to receive our last frost June 5 and our first on Aug. 29 – 84 frost-free days in all. They were wrong. We received our last frost June 7. It was all […] Read more

I have 92 different projects on the go and not one of them is anywhere near completion. While I seem to be able to retain focus in other areas of my life, when it comes to gardening, I may have an attention disorder. No sooner do I have one area of a garden under control […] Read more

I have just finished going on a spud spree. I’m still not sure how it happened. Drop me off at the mall and I am a model of self control. But apparently if you leave me alone with a potato catalogue on a winter afternoon, it’s a different matter. I started off simply intending to […] Read more

They say you need to leave a place before you can write about it. You need to walk the cobblestoned streets of Edinburgh before you can describe the dandelion-laced sidewalks of small town Western Canada. You need to drive to Vancouver to learn that hauling your own water is as mysterious to some as sailing […] Read more

Our house is made out of logs, so perhaps this is where the squirrel got confused. He probably thought the house was a tree – a big square tree full of nuts. Which is sort of harsh. Just because a person leaps about the living room in mismatched pajamas, singing Like a Virgin doesn’t necessarily […] Read more

“What’s this thing?” my son asked, pulling a grooved square of black metal from the back of the cupboard. He was on a quest for a frying pan, after discovering that his favourite pan was beyond saving. In other words, it was in the sink and had yet to be resurrected, clean and shining, to […] Read more