Mary Carigiet is an avid gardener.

She enjoys a good joke and laughs heartily, wrinkling her nose with her eyes close to tears.

She is a hugger; she likes to hug and be hugged.

She loves playing card games with close friends but does not mind playing solitaire at times.

She enjoys just about the same things that any active and happily retired person enjoys doing in retirement.

With one exception: Carigiet will be 100 years old the day after Valentine’s Day. But the Utah native who looks as youthful and as active as someone 20 or even 30 years her junior would have a hard time convincing people who are not in the know. She is fiercely independent and maintained that independence even after the death of her husband five years ago. They were three years shy of celebrating their golden anniversary when he passed away.

She and her late husband, Ed, maintained a flower garden as well as a vegetable garden. They had so many flowers in their garden that every Memorial Day, they made 21 bouquets which they placed on veterans’ graves in Stockton and in Galt. This was when they were living in Stockton. Carigiet said they also grew a summer garden and a winter garden. They never wanted for fresh vegetable and fruits.

They moved to an old farm house in unincorporated Manteca in 1963 after Ed retired from the macaroni factory in Stockton where he worked. Actually, the business had to be torn down to make way for a highway.

“Ed loved to cook, too,” Carigiet said, recalling happy memories of her husband with a big smile.

“He used to cater for church functions and at St. Mary’s (Catholic) Church” in Stockton, she said.

Reminiscing about her life with her late husband is one of her favorite pastimes as well. They got married in Reno but were later married in the Catholic church in Stockton.

Unfortunately, said Carigiet, they did not have any children. But she has a stepdaughter, Sylvia, with whom she enjoys a really close relationship. “She’s like a daughter to me. She lives just a mile from me.”

Like any close mother and daughter, they do a lot of things together including shopping.

 “I also have nieces and nephews and cousins,” Carigiet added.

She was the second oldest of six children – two girls and two boys. Everyone in her family is gone. Her younger brother died at age 8; one sister passed away at age 26.

“I’m the last one in my family,” she said.

Asked what is her secret is to a long life, a question that she gets asked quite often, Carigiet laughed and quickly replied, “That’s what I’d like to know!”

Still laughing, she added, “I have a sense of humor that you can’t stop. If I don’t have that, I’d be crying all day.”

She’s not a picky eater either. She was “kind of fussy” about the food she ate “when I was young,” she said.

“I’m not a big meat eater,” she admitted.

But other than that, “I eat everything – vegetables, fruits – and I love ravioli.”

Many of her plants died after her husband passed away. But she still has plenty of flowers, vegetables, and fruit trees around her farm house to keep her busy all year-round. Among her fruit trees are a persimmon, a peach, apricots, plums, and figs. On the west side of the house, she has an orchard of citrus trees that are heavy with fruit at this time of the year – a navel orange, tangerine, a grapefruit, lime, and a lemon tree.

“I do what I can,” she said modestly about her gardening chores which she had to cut down a bit after she fell down not too long ago.

“I still do what I can,” she said.