Christina Abuelo, Theodore Capinski, and Bill Capinski

[00:03] CHRISTINA ABUELO: My name is Christina Abuelo. I'm 55 years old. Today is May 18, 2024. I'm in the Central Library, San Diego Central Library. And today I'm being interviewed by my son, Theo, Theodore Capinski and my husband, Bill Capinski

[00:23] THEODORE CAPINSKI: My name is Theodore Capinski Theo, 19. Today is May 18, 2024, in the San Diego Central Library, and I'm interviewing my mom, christina. My name is bill Capinski I am 56. Today is May 18, 2024. I am in the central library in San Diego, and I am interviewing my wife, christina Abuelo.

[00:48] CHRISTINA ABUELO: I'm glad that we didn't disagree on the date.

[00:53] THEODORE CAPINSKI: I was thinking 19th. I'm glad I said 18th. So to begin, we're here because you're San Diego. In San Diego. How did you get here?

[01:06] CHRISTINA ABUELO: So I grew up on the east coast in New England, and I fell in love with a scientist. And so it was bill's job that brought us out here. He got a job in a technology company. He works with high energy lasers. I don't really understand a lot about what he does, but we ended up moving out here when you kids were six months, two years, and four years old, and we didn't have family out here, and so it was very. A very interesting experience.

[01:44] THEODORE CAPINSKI: So how'd you manage to entertain yourself?

[01:47] CHRISTINA ABUELO: I didn't entertain myself. I entertained my children. So at that point, we lived at the beach, and so we spent a lot of time at the beach. We went out to different playgrounds. There was a lot, a lot of playgrounds. Like, there were probably a dozen playgrounds that were in our rotation all over town. I joined some playgroups.

[02:12] THEODORE CAPINSKI: And then eventually, you found out about our elementary garden or locked the ride.

[02:18] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Well, so when it came time to put Ben, the oldest, in kindergarten, I wanted him to go to a bilingual school because I was raised with Spanish and English in my house, and I wanted you guys to go to a bilingual school. And I found out I was too late to join the lottery for the bilingual school. And so I liken myself to this old detective called Columbo from tv, and I just kind of pester people and ask a lot of questions. So I guess I was down at the enrollment office saying, like, how can I get my kids a bilingual education? And they said, well, actually, there's this school that is basically having a soft opening. It's a new program. It's a new dual language immersion school. The school was in Sherman Heights, which is in the promise zone. The promise zone is a federally recognized area, which, with very high rates of socioeconomic need and a lot of social issues. And also the school at the time, they rated schools on a decile system, so one to ten, and this school was a one. So nobody, like, really wanted to go to school there from outside of the school boundaries. So we were able to get a place at that school. And so we started going. We started commuting into that school from our neighborhood, from Tierra Santa. And then I guess one day when Ben was in first grade, I said, hey, we should have a school garden. And honestly, it was something that I blurted out of at the time. I don't think I put that much thought into it, but that led down a path of kind of, like, obsessively working on this project for the next 15 years.

[04:18] THEODORE CAPINSKI: Looking back at the first time you thought about a garden, is there anything you would change or do differently just in those first few moments or months?

[04:31] CHRISTINA ABUELO: I would do a lot differently. There wasn't a. A lot of support. I mean, there were people willing to help, but I guess there wasn't. There was, like, no really good manual, you know, for, like, how to do it. So there was, like, a lot of fumbling around and, you know, and also, like, one of the things that we did was we started installing garden beds. We didn't have money for an irrigation system, and at one point, somebody from the school district came out and said, oh, you know, if you want an irrigation system, it will cost six to $7,000. And so I thought, well, we'll never be able to afford that. So, you know, if I had to do things all over again, and now I get to, because I work on gardens for other schools. You know, we planned the irrigation system first before we put in the beds.

[05:22] THEODORE CAPINSKI: How did you manage to acquire all this funding that you needed to build up these gardens?

[05:27] CHRISTINA ABUELO: It was very, very difficult.

[05:29] THEODORE CAPINSKI: Did you have any past experience?

[05:32] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Yes, I did, theo. In my past life, I worked in nonprofits, and I had a substantial amount of grant proposal preparation and writing experience, so. But in the old days, like, you know, all my previous success didn't matter that much because there wasn't a lot of funding available for garden education. So I would go around and beg for money, and every year, I'd get enough, like, money or donations for, like, I'd get enough lumber for two garden beds. And so your father would, like, build the beds, and then we'd put him in, and then we'd have the schoolchildren, you know, fill them, and, you know, like, they took over, but your father was, like, crucial to getting, you know, to getting started. And it was really hard, hard going. I did not pay myself for 14 years. And then a year ago, I got hired by the county. They have funding for garden education, so I got hired as a temporary professional expert. But the other thing that happened was the pandemic, as terrible as it was actually for me and the program I work on is that we got very generous pandemic funding, so we're able to now expand our program into a lot of other schools. And our program targets schools that are 85% poverty and higher. So the. Based on the free and reduced lunch rates, so there's about 30 of them in 30 elementary schools in San Diego unified. And so our program, our initiative is called the thriving 30 school Garden Equity Initiative.

[07:20] THEODORE CAPINSKI: Do you have any success stories or memorable moments from implementing gardens?

[07:27] CHRISTINA ABUELO: I do. I have a couple. One is, this is years ago, I guess, I started doing what I call gorilla cooking classes, and we had a garden, an area of the garden that I called the kitchen. And it was basically near an electrical outlet, and we put a folding table and had a burner there. And we'd have the kids pick kale or collard greens or swiss chard, and then we'd saute them in garlic and olive oil. And this was very, very popular. And to my great surprise, I had kids gobbling down plates of cooked kale.

[08:03] THEODORE CAPINSKI: Why do you think it was so popular?

[08:07] CHRISTINA ABUELO: So it was because the kids were involved. Like, they were involved. It was hands on. So they're, you know, they're taking care of this garden, then they pick the kale. They either ripped it up or they cut it. And if I had knives and cutting boards, I'd roll up the leaves and I'd show them how to cut a chiffonade, which makes these, like, ribbons. And then we'd have them, you know, smell the garlic as it was sauteing, and you'd kind of see them get woozy, and then the greens were in, and then they're stirring it, you know, they're taking turns. And so when they're involved in the process, they will eat. 20 out of 30 kids will gobble down this plate of cooked greens. And I felt like, as a person, I don't have that many talents, but I thought getting kids to eat vegetables is my superpower.

[08:58] THEODORE CAPINSKI: Is there any way you took this realization and expanded it into other parts of your garden infrastructure? I mean, I think getting the kids involved.

[09:09] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Yeah, I think, you know, I think student involvement is super important. When we come to a new school. We actually have the kids, like, help us design the garden. We do a design charette, and we have them draw, you know, young kids with crayons. What do you want in the garden? And they draw pictures for us. And so that all of our planning and design, you know, starts with the kid's vision.

[09:33] THEODORE CAPINSKI: What about the rest of the kid's family? Are they involved in any way?

[09:38] CHRISTINA ABUELO: We do involve parents. It's been hard with the pandemic. It really shut down a lot of parent involvement. But, for example, most recently, we just did surveys. We surveyed about 100 families at a school and said, what do you want us to grow in the garden? Because we want the gardens to our crops to reflect the cultural heritage of the students.

[10:01] THEODORE CAPINSKI: Sometimes you give the crops to the children to bring home to their families, right?

[10:06] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, certainly, yeah, we give away our extra produce to food insecure families.

[10:13] THEODORE CAPINSKI: And you also engage with the local community, right. And get some volunteers and, yeah, certainly.

[10:21] CHRISTINA ABUELO: We have, yeah, we have volunteer events, and definitely school families are part of that. We also, you know, we are part of, like, school events. Like if there's a science night or back to school night, we'll have a table and, you know, try to, yeah, try to get, you know, kids interested in and their families in growing food at home.

[10:44] THEODORE CAPINSKI: I recall one time, or maybe several times, you were able to organize an entire garden fair. Can you tell me about that?

[10:52] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Yeah, that was called the garden festival. It took, I think, like, a couple hundred hours of time every year. And I did, like, all the groundwork. I recruit all these exhibitors, different nonprofits. One year there was a bike company in San Diego, and we just had bikes on the playground that the kids.

[11:16] THEODORE CAPINSKI: Just to be clear, this is at Sherman.

[11:18] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Oh, this is at Sherman elementary, at your. Yeah, your alma mater, your elementary school. And, yeah, my family was volunteer. What is that, voluntold, they say. So you, at age twelve, were directing all the traffic. And that was really funny because you were a very intense twelve year old. And this one guy came, I said, I said, he said, where should I set up my table? And I said, well, go talk to the kid who's in charge of parking. And he said, oh, is he the really intense little kid? And he knew what, I guess you had some kind of brand of sweatshirt, which I don't really pay attention to clothes, but he knew you were wearing a certain brand of sweatshirt, but you used to tell everybody where to park, and you did it like, very, like, you were just so precise. And then when you went on to middle school. You and I worked on the parking fundraisers, and this is at my middle school. In your middle school, they had these parking fundraisers during special events in Balboa park.

[12:31] THEODORE CAPINSKI: Right.

[12:32] CHRISTINA ABUELO: And I swear, like, because of you, I think they could cram like 30% more cars onto the school campus just because you have this special gift for fitting things into places.

[12:47] THEODORE CAPINSKI: So going back to the festival, it went on for, I think, at least two years, but in more recent years, you haven't done it, but you have started a garden summer camp.

[13:02] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Yeah. So the garden festival, I was planning it for, you know, the spring of 2020, and then, you know, it got canceled and then. Yeah, then the pandemic happened. And so then there was money for, you know, there was pandemic funding, I think, through ARPA, and so there was money for a summer camp. And so we're planning on doing our third summer camp, and that's been a dream of mine, to have money for a garden summer camp. So our camp is called Garden Adventures going. It's 20 days after summer school. It's in the afternoons after summer school. We're going to be at three school campuses, and it's going to be really fun. The kids are going to learn to grow. They're going to have cooking lessons. They're going to do garden and nature inspired art. Hopefully we'll go on a couple field trips.

[13:56] THEODORE CAPINSKI: What inspired you to start the summer camp?

[13:59] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Well, so I guess I grew up in New England, and I grew up in the seventies and eighties, and I had, there was no Internet. We got. There were three television stations. Well, I guess. Is that VHF or UHF? VHF, right.

[14:18] THEODORE CAPINSKI: Yeah, and there's UHF. There's three more.

[14:20] CHRISTINA ABUELO: There's. Yeah, so the UHF ones were really grainy, but, like, we didn't have cable. My parents were kind of Luddites. We didn't have video games. So I had an outdoor childhood and, and, you know, I think I. That can be a really, you know, have a lot of positive impact on a kid. And actually, right around the time that, you know, we moved to San Diego, maybe a little bit after that, a San Diego author named Richard Louv came out with a book in which he identified this thing called nature deficit disorder. And so he said, you know, there's this generation of kids coming, you know, on, you know, they're spending a lot of time online, they're spending less and less time outside, I guess, because of, you know, there were two things that were causing kids to spend more time indoors. One was technology and the other one was stranger danger. So, like, when, you know, your father and I were growing up, we would just spend hours and hours, you know, unmonitored outside. And, I don't know, in my neighborhood, when it was time for dinner, like, the moms would yell out, you know, for their kids names, and it would be, like, dusk or getting dark, and the moms would yell for. And you'd have to go home. Cause you heard your mom bellowing. Did you have something similar, Bill?

[15:34] THEODORE CAPINSKI: Right? Yeah. Yeah.

[15:36] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Did you. And I know you had a creek. Like, you had. You just. You were, like, in the woods a lot.

[15:44] THEODORE CAPINSKI: I mean, they would just. They would just yell out your name for you to come home. And some of the neighbors rang a bell for their kids.

[15:52] CHRISTINA ABUELO: What was the range of, like, how far away from your house could you get?

[15:57] THEODORE CAPINSKI: Well, we could only hear if we were within a couple houses.

[16:01] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Oh, okay. What about the Bell did that. That had more range?

[16:05] THEODORE CAPINSKI: Had a much larger range. Yeah, you could hear it.

[16:07] CHRISTINA ABUELO: So could you hear your mom if you were down by the crick?

[16:09] THEODORE CAPINSKI: Not at all.

[16:10] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Oh, okay. So what happened if you were at the crick and it was time for dinner?

[16:15] THEODORE CAPINSKI: We just knew when to come home, I guess.

[16:17] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Okay. Yeah, I guess when it gets, like, pitch black, you're like, oh, I bet. So best get going now. But, yeah. So I think outdoor experiences are very impactful and can be transformative. And then particularly for the students that our program serves, many, many of them have experienced trauma or what's called adverse childhood experiences. So they're, you know, they're dealing. You know, many of our kids are dealing with issues like homelessness and hunger, parents in jail. I remember, actually, when your brother had to write a story for his fifth grade write. It was a fifth grade writing assignment, and the teacher took all the stories and published them in a book. And I guess he did that with you as well. But, you know, you know, Ben said, you know, like, the big thing in his life up until that time was that he got stung by some bees. So he wrote about this experience. But, you know, the other kids in his class wrote about, like, how their parent had died or their parent was in jail or their parent was, you know, like, you know, in a, you know, domestic violence shelter. And so, like, you know, there are these kids just dealing with this really, really heavy stuff. And, you know, I believe that being outside in nature can really help kind of people cope with, you know, with trauma and stress.

[17:54] THEODORE CAPINSKI: You would say that bringing people together in the gardens helps them, like, socially interact and build skills that they might be not be able to build at their homes.

[18:06] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, originally I was talking about just, like, being outside with nature and being with green, but also when you're in a garden with other kids and other adults who care about you. Yeah. You're building these bonds and you're working on these interactive things and projects, and that, I think, has really. Just can be really powerful. It can help build kids self esteem and their sense of self efficacy. It's really cool.

[18:36] THEODORE CAPINSKI: So initially, you started in my school community, Sherman, but eventually you were able to expand to other gardens. How did this start, and how did you choose which schools to go to?

[18:53] CHRISTINA ABUELO: So after ten years, I kind of had the garden again. It was like every year we'd get two beds and add two beds. So after ten years, I got a grant for an educator. And so I had basically somebody who took over a lot of my role of, like, planning the classes and teaching them. And so I had a little bit of extra time on my hands, and I thought, wow, a lot of these other schools, you know, in the area don't have somebody like me who's, you know, extremely weird, I want to say passionate. You know, I have a grant writing background, and I figured I had a lot of experience, which is also, I have made a lot of mistakes and learned from them. So I just started cold calling the schools in the area, and I said, do you want a garden? And all the principals said, yes. It was kind of interesting. A lot of them use this word. They say exposure. They'd say the students need exposure. And I just thought, like, exposure to what? But it's just like a word, like, they need exposure to everything. You know, a lot of them don't ever leave their neighborhoods, and maybe they don't leave their house. Some of them don't really leave their houses. They leave, go home. They go to school, and then they go home, and there's just not a lot of exposure.

[20:16] THEODORE CAPINSKI: So how many communities are you working with today?

[20:20] CHRISTINA ABUELO: I believe that I have kind of activated about. I call it activating. Cause we'll either, like, build a garden or there's, like, what I call a garden carcass where there's, like, the remains of where a garden used to be. And so we have to revitalize it. Or, I mean, in one place, there was, like, hazardous waste that we had to get rid of, and that took months and months. So I think it's been about 15 gardens that I've, you know, and with partners, there have been so many partners, I could not do it without other individuals and organizations.

[20:56] THEODORE CAPINSKI: So it's more than just the gardens that you're putting in. I mean, you actually have garden programs and educational programs.

[21:03] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Yeah, yeah. So we try to do both. We certainly don't have enough staff to educate at all the schools, but we've partnered with food Corps, and so they'll, you know, that's kind of like akin to Americorps, but they work on gardening and nutrition education. So we've got some food corps educators at some, some sites. There's another garden education nonprofit that sometimes has funded educators. And so actually, yeah, that's something that I think it's really important to have. You know, it's great to have a garden at the school, but then it's also important to have an adult, like an interpreter who can help the kids, you know, understand the garden and you know, what's going on, you know, how plants work, how food works. And then I've had these incredible educators that they can be doing a lesson about something, but then they pivot. Oh, well, here's a monarch chrysalis. And they start talking about that and explaining it because it's right in front of the kids faces. And so that's what's really neat about garden education, is everything. It's different every time you go into the garden. What's going to be there.

[22:19] THEODORE CAPINSKI: At the school? Is this an actual class or do they just go out during recess or.

[22:24] CHRISTINA ABUELO: When do they interact with the educators? So right now it's always different. But right now we have what we're planning on doing with the rest. Like, the final amount of our pandemic money is we're going to have monthly classes. So monthly garden education classes for k through fifth grade. And we actually, our educators and I created like a scope and sequence. So it's like 50 classes from kindergarten to fifth grade, and they build on each other. And so you might come into the garden to learn about compost, but every year when you learn about it, you're learning about it from a different angle and it's aligned with the standards for learning for that year. So our plan is to go every month for every single class in a school. But like this year, we got a late start. So I have about ten part time educators, and I think we're working with about ten schools. And we, and basically for the last two or three months of the school year, we offered them a series of three classes. And so the kids are coming out, you know, can be once a month or it can be like, some schools opted to come once a week for three weeks, but hopefully next year, we'll have a cohort of schools that will do every month for the entire school.

[23:39] THEODORE CAPINSKI: So you led with, of course, that you're around 55. That means you've spent almost, if not more than a quarter of your life on this project. How do you think it's changed you as a person? And what's your favorite part about it.

[24:00] CHRISTINA ABUELO: If you can pin it? Oh, my gosh.

[24:03] THEODORE CAPINSKI: A favorite part?

[24:04] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Yeah. I think for me, one of my favorite parts is that there's just always, this is not a good part, but there's always problems that we're confronting. So one of my favorite parts about the work that I do is that I get to help solve problems, and I get to bring gardens to schools that otherwise wouldn't have them. Most school gardens are, like, with affluent schools, schools that can afford to this kind of program and these kind of, the infrastructure. And so, like, we had a school where the school district was saying, no, you can't put a garden here. And we actually, I actually went out and found a volunteer landscape architect who drew these, like, really professional looking plans. And we showed the plans to the school district, and they had to, you know, they had to agree to let us build a garden there.

[25:04] THEODORE CAPINSKI: You get a lot of people involved from a lot of different backgrounds.

[25:07] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm, I think I'm a very resourceful person, and so I, that's something I really enjoy about the project. And then how has this changed me as a person? That's a really, whoa. I don't know.

[25:27] THEODORE CAPINSKI: I'm always like, yeah, you mentioned that you've worked with nonprofits before. So does it just feel like you clock in 8 hours clock out or. Oh, no, not a regular nine to five?

[25:40] CHRISTINA ABUELO: No. And I've always been involved in grassroots nonprofits, so they're usually something that I've been very passionate about. And I actually heard read somebody else in the, in the nonprofit sector talking about their salary and, or their low salary, and they called it a passion tax. So, you know, I, I don't know. It would be, I remember, actually, Bill, when we lived in Auburn, and I think we took like, a night before we had kids. We took a class on, I think it was a woodworking class.

[26:13] THEODORE CAPINSKI: Right.

[26:13] CHRISTINA ABUELO: And there was a guy there who had spent his life, his whole career, his entire career, and he retired working on the Auburn dam, and it was this thing that he spent his entire life working on. The project got canceled, and I just thought, wow. Like, I don't know. I just thought I would hate to, like, you know, my entire working life to not have anything to show for it. Hopefully he did.

[26:42] THEODORE CAPINSKI: You've had nothing to show for it.

[26:43] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Yeah, no, I'm just saying, like, for.

[26:45] THEODORE CAPINSKI: Me, because the children you've already affected.

[26:46] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Yeah, I feel. No, I'm very happy. Like, I know that I've brought these really cool opportunities to students who wouldn't otherwise have them. I think our, you know, over 15 years, there's been thousands of kids who have had, you know, experience with the gardens. So I, you know.

[27:05] THEODORE CAPINSKI: Yeah, I think you. You have heard of some students who go on to, like, tell you about their gardens that they work on, right? Personal gardens, perhaps?

[27:16] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Yeah, I mean, I think we, you know, I love getting that feedback that, you know, like, I actually, one time we did a tasting. We tasted hummus in the garden, and we picked, like, carrots and celery and lettuce, and we said we had, like, a contest. We wanted the kids to rate which vegetable went best with hummus. And so they all tasted it and they voted on it. But then, yeah, a few weeks later, a little girl came to me and she said, you know, I was in the supermarket with my mom, and I told her I wanted to buy hummus. So we bought hummus. So those are things. Yeah, we give away transplants to kids. And even, like, one year, I did a, I called it a classroom plant contest, and I gave it to all, every classroom got an indoor plant. And I said, whoever's plant looks the best at the end of the year will win a prize. And so I think that was, like, in 2018. And then I was so worried. I think that when the pandemic closed down the schools, one of the things I worried about was like, oh, no, all those classroom plants are. We're supposed to come back in two weeks, but I think most of them probably died. But then at the beginning of this year, a teacher came up to me, Miss Ayres or Miss aldrich, when she was ben's teacher. And she said, christina, I still have my classroom plan, and it's still thriving. So that was really cool, even to hear that from a teacher.

[28:41] THEODORE CAPINSKI: What about your garden at home?

[28:45] CHRISTINA ABUELO: So I had, yeah, when we moved in, there was kind of, the old homeowner had a. Well, the previous homeowner had a garden space, and I think I did try gardening. And, well, this is. And so part of the problem was that we live on a canyon. And so, like, there's all these animals that take out our crops. But then also, this is. There's a case, so we don't really have a functioning garden. Also, it was the cobbler's. What is it the cobbler's? Children don't have shoes. So I know that because of my, you know, obsession with. With my work, that, you know, my own family has. Has, you know, not, you know, not really gotten a ton of my attention. And I kind of.

[29:41] THEODORE CAPINSKI: There are a lot of succulents in. Covering the backyard.

[29:44] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Yeah, we do have a lot of succulents. Well, because they don't need to be watered, they don't need to be taken care of, and they're perfectly happy. But I did have a question for you, theo, which is, you know, I've always felt really guilty about kind of the, you know, the lack of attention that you guys, you boys had, and to some extent, you had to raise yourselves a little bit because your mom was absent or just like, you know, nothing. My attention wasn't there. And I remember, was it you or your brother where when you were, like, four or five, when you would talk to me, you would grab my chin and turn my head so that I'd be looking at you. And just constantly, every time we spoke, my chin was being yanked because, you know, because that kid wanted my attention. No. You know, and I think rightfully, they had to make sure, but you guys had to kind of, like, fight a. For my attention. And so I'm kind of curious how you feel about your experience.

[30:50] THEODORE CAPINSKI: I think that I really appreciate, looking back, to some extent, the level of independence I had, and I think it was actually pretty well balanced with my interaction with you and Bill as well. And. But because I had, like, some. Some sort of independence, it meant that I would just kind of absorb what you guys did without too much pressure. So I, like, I cook a lot. I plan to start a garden in my university apartment however I can. And I'm studying physics like my father, so I just, like, casually absorbed it without, like, I didn't feel.

[31:35] CHRISTINA ABUELO: You're passive.

[31:36] THEODORE CAPINSKI: Yeah, I know that a lot of people have very parents who are very aggressive saying, you need to study this, you need to study that. You need to do this in the future. And I feel like I just got that without having to. Having it be expected of me.

[31:52] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Yeah, well, okay. I feel better because, I mean, that's kind of a sore point. I feel really, really guilty for, you know, not being around or, like, there was a lot of, you know, not having as many home cooked meals or having like, garden supplies piled up all over my house.

[32:14] THEODORE CAPINSKI: It means I had to learn how to cook myself.

[32:16] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Yeah. Yeah.

[32:17] THEODORE CAPINSKI: Leftover kale. Yeah. My housemates will appreciate me knowing how to cook.

[32:23] CHRISTINA ABUELO: I know when things got really, really hard during garden camp last year, I.

[32:28] THEODORE CAPINSKI: Might stay away from lasagna.

[32:30] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Yeah. Things got really difficult during garden camp because our funder made a clerical error, and I discovered that we had a $23,000 gap, like, a few days before summer camp. And that meant I couldn't hire some counselors. And I started working, like, 1314 hours, days, every day, and I worked out on weekends. And I was so impressed with you, Theo, because where you had gotten your driver's license and you would take your brother and you'd go shopping, and then you'd cook dinner, and I'd, like, be sitting at the computer, and somebody would hand me a warm bowl of food, and it really meant a lot to me. So thank you. Thanks for picking up my slack.

[33:17] THEODORE CAPINSKI: So what kind of are you looking forward to in the future with your program?

[33:28] CHRISTINA ABUELO: So, you know, my goal is to. I would like to be able to position this very underfunded and underfundable program so that, you know, it, you know. Cause I really believe in garden education. I believe that it can really help kids academic performance. It helps. We know it helps their mental health. It helps them. It helps them with food literacy. It helps them in so many domains. So I really. That's why I do what I do, and I would like to make. What I want to do is kind of position the program that I'm working on to be. To last beyond my involvement. And I also want to help other, you know, schools in under resourced neighborhoods to be able to provide this resource to their students.

[34:27] THEODORE CAPINSKI: Are you looking to expand, like, regionally, nationally, internationally?

[34:32] CHRISTINA ABUELO: You know, I'm.

[34:34] THEODORE CAPINSKI: What's your scope?

[34:35] CHRISTINA ABUELO: I'm getting on in years. You know, I hired somebody recently, and she doesn't know this, but I kind of, in my mind, I refer her to. Refer to her as my protege. So I definitely could use more. You know, I'm hoping some folks with, you know, younger energy can come in and take over. So, you know, I would love to be around.

[35:00] THEODORE CAPINSKI: I want to build it at least to a stable.

[35:03] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Yeah, I'd love to build it as stable and. Yeah. And to build capacity and kind of the next generation. I would love to see a lot more BIPOC leaders in the movement, and so I'm hoping to help facilitate that.

[35:20] THEODORE CAPINSKI: All right.

[35:22] CHRISTINA ABUELO: You good?

[35:26] THEODORE CAPINSKI: Yeah. Thank you for talking with me. Do you have any final questions? I think that summarized the last 20 plus years pretty well.

[35:35] CHRISTINA ABUELO: Yeah. Thank you so much to both of you for putting up with me.