Francine also grows strawberries, tomatoes, and of course, cucumbers. “The strawberries and the mini-me cucumbers are for my grand-kids to eat off the vine,” she laughs. After enjoying fresh fruit and vegetables all summer, Francine processes what extra she has. Tomatoes are frozen whole to make spaghetti sauce or roasted for soup. Francine makes pesto with all her basil and stores around 90 bulbs of garlic that will last until February. For Francine, gardening is a peaceful activity that teaches patience, connects her with nature, and helps nurture a sense of wonderment. “It’s truly extraordinary that a tiny little seed will become a cucumber one day!”
Enjoying the Vegetables of Your Labour Kilworth resident Francine Cormier didn’t always have a green thumb. For her first attempt at growing veg - etables, she dug out some grass, planted a few cucumbers, and walked away. The cucumbers died within a few weeks, and Francine learned her first lesson: vegetable gardens, while rewarding, require lots of attention.
“Besides watering, they need fre- quent pruning, staking, fertilizing and harvesting,” explains Francine. “But biting into that first ripe tomato blew me away, and I was hooked for life.”
That was 30 years and several gardens ago. Now, Francine grows her fresh produce in sprawling garden plots and raised beds she made herself on Elmhurst Street, where she has lived with her husband, John, for the past 10 years. Throughout her gardening career, Francine has grown a variety of vegetables, including herbs, broccoli, carrots, peppers, peas, beans, potatoes, Swiss chard, bok choy, lettuce, raspberries, and cantaloupe, mostly to see if she could do it. “I’ve narrowed my planting down to the food we love eating,” Francine adds. “Nothing is more satisfying than making a quinoa salad in the summer using all the ingredients from my garden.”
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KKD Villager November 2025
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