BY VALERIE MYERS ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 6, 2021
12
Gus Picardo and his wife, Mary Picardo, pose for a photo in their backyard greenhouse, March 19. The couple got ahead on their gardening because of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Jack Hanrahan/Erie Times-News via AP)
Moms Are Special
Gus and Mary Picardo have been eating their own homegrown lettuce since February.
By mid-March, they had tomatoes growing on more than four dozen healthy plants. Their fig trees were bearing fruit while most of the region’s figs were still buried to protect them from the cold. And their perennials and annuals grew stoutly from seed even when temperatures dropped below freezing.