 Well thank you for having me here today and I hope that today our time together will inspire you in your garden and hopefully you think about gardening in a different way and what you're about to hear is really a story of people and plants hope and hard work and redemption. This story proves that gardening can change lives and that it can actually be an escape and I want you to think about just how often you interact with a plant during your day if you don't actually have your own garden. But before we begin I just want to ask you all what you think of when you hear the word alcatraz, what pops into your mind? Cell block, prison, the rock, maybe Sean Connery. Very few people ever say gardens and when we finish today hopefully that's the first thing that pops into your mind. But before we start I just want to share with you a few little facts about alcatraz that you may not have known. We have 4.5 acres of gardens on the island. The island itself is only about 22 and a half acres in size. We have the first lighthouse on the whole west coast on alcatraz and we get 1.5 million visitors every year to the island. That's about 5,000 people a day and we're also going to start with just a little history lesson first and if you've ever heard of the book in the movie, the secret gardens, our alcatraz gardens are kind of like that. It's not the first thing that pops into your head and it's really an unlikely place for there to be gardens. We want you when you come out to really think gardens we don't want you to miss them. Most people are heading up to the cell block and they walk by all the terraces. They don't stop to look over the edge and this is where the gardens are. If you get off the beaten track and actually slow down, listen to the docents telling you where the tours are and where the open gardens are, those are the people that really get to experience alcatraz. So I want you to keep in mind alcatraz has actually been home for people right from 1854 right up until 1971. This is just a little shot of some children who grew up on the island and we're going to start with our history and this is actually the first picture of alcatraz. It really is a bare rock made up of gray wackle sandstone and no fresh water just the winter rains and the fog drip. It really is the most unlikely place that you could ever picture having a garden out here. It's not likely that Native Americans lived here. It was a bird colony and most likely they stopped and gathered the eggs. So with the start of gold was discovered in 1849 and the military saw alcatraz as the perfect place for a fortress. This is how the military shaped the island with roadways and a fortress on top of it. They actually brought the soil in place the whole cannons and with that a few of the native seeds came in. Our first garden picture though is 1869 and this is the military structure that sat at the very top of the island the citadel and in front you can just see it's a normal Victorian scene the ladies in their big dresses and it's hard to believe that this is actually an alcatraz but when you're sent to an island the first thing is natural to make it a home and the women wanted to garden to soften the rock and so they started bringing in their favorite garden plants and stealing some of that soil to make it a garden for themselves. When the civil war started the island actually turned into a military prison so now you have guards and the women and children are still living there but then you also have prisoners on the island and for the women just gardening and raising their family was just a natural thing for them to do so in the background here you can see Angel Island and the gardens are very ornate and they're very Victorian looking. In 1881 three homes were built for those highest-ranking officers and this with the privilege of being a high-ranking officer they had their own garden their high view up on the hill looking out over the bay and on a small island having your own garden was actually you know really a privilege and you notice all the detail of the cannons there they decorated with whatever they could. Theodore Roosevelt was president when the cell house was started in 1908 and finished in 1912 when it was actually constructed at the time it was the world's largest steel reinforced concrete structure so pretty amazing construction even back then. The military inmates actually helped build this building and once it was completed they were the lucky ones to be able to move into their new homes their little five by nine cells. With the building boom of the 20s the island started to take on a little shanty town look and not everyone was really pleased with the progress though. Back then the city of San Francisco just the bustling town really didn't like the look that the military was taking cluttering up their bay their beautiful views so they actually started pressuring the military to beautify the island and the military offered a vocational training for the inmates. Part of that effort the inmates got trained in gardening learning how to plant seeds and shrubs. The California wildflower and botanical society or blossom society sorry donated trees and shrubs. The Drosanthemum you see in this picture the pink ice plant was part of that effort so it was planted on the south side of the island to face the city and give a nice cheerful pink face. You can see this all the way from the city and even from the Golden Gate Bridge. With the depression the crime rate really skyrocketed and prohibition combined rose the gangster era and the military gave over the island to the federal penitentiary to create the maximum security prison and this is the time but most people are familiar with Al Capone all those inmates got sent there and you actually had to earn your way to Alcatraz. You had to behaving badly at another prison to get sent to Alcatraz and then once you're there through punishment and confinement you are corrected and then you're sent back to finish out your sentence at that first prison that you came from. So the island took on a different look at the guard towers at the gates and really was a harsh place to be. But I just want to introduce you to a gentleman now, Freddie Reichel. He was the secretary to the very first warden and he was a single man on the island and didn't have much to do in his spare time in the evening. He actually took an interest in what the military had left behind in terms of the gardens and he lived down in one of the cottages on the prairie ground, the very first one right there at the bottom and he started gardening behind his home. A very novice garden just learned by trial and error. It didn't take him long though to realize that he couldn't keep up with what the military had done and he wondered like where could he find people with time on their hands to help out. Sure enough he looked up the hill and saw a whole building of people just sitting there. So he got permission from the warden for these maximum security inmates to work in the gardens, work with tools and knives and shears and they actually turned out to be really reliable work gardeners out there. Just like my the inmates back then we also rely on the community gardeners to come out and help care for the gardens. When we took on the projects we knew we couldn't do it alone. There's so much out there. So just like the inmates the gardeners learned about something different, an excuse to be outside in the fresh air, doing something different, meeting different people and the inmates then were most likely looking for ways to escape once they're outside. My volunteers kind of looked for ways to get to the island for excuses to come out and it's a whole different really sweet community now that we have. But for these inmates if they weren't outside gardening having a job is a privilege. If you got out of your cell you know you were doing something productive. If you did not have a job though you'd be inside for 20 hours in your little five by nine cell. The island would eventually close in 1963. The prison shut down. The crumbling walls in the salt air really were taking a toll. If you've ever watched that movie Escape from Alcatraz where they're tunneling through the back of the cell block that's actually true and it was just too expensive to maintain any longer. So after 29 years of it being a maximum security prison it shut down with it being processed of 1,545 inmates during its time as a prison. At any one time there's only 260 inmates out there and the average length of stay would be about eight years for an inmate. The inmates actually had two main complaints the constant cold and the rule of silence. So if you can imagine eight years of silence and that's your punishment being in a little five by nine cell the privilege of gardening was pretty lucky. In 1971 it actually became a part of the national park system and after a brief occupation by Native Americans. So this became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and this is an early picture in 1972 in the very center of the screen you can see an actual ranger tour being led. Back then people were so fascinated with Alcatraz even today they are. This is the first time people were allowed on the island as civilians. There was great mystery around the island. No one really knew what had gone on at there and they were just really curious about finding it for themselves what had taken place. Back then everyone was led around in tours. I'm very controlled of where you could go where you couldn't but looking at this aerial you can see all the bright pink so that Drosanthoma was still surviving. The dark pink is a pelagonium, a geranium and you can even see a lot of the agaves still hanging on. So it really is an unexpected place for there to be gardens. The harshness of the winds and after the prison shut down those gardens just sat vacant and it really took a lot of effort to get them going again and to retell those stories that those people had been out there with. So really what happened to the gardens? How do we get to where we are now? Imagine that you find a picture of your grandmother's garden and you're standing in her garden and it's looking like this. You go off that picture and you want to just recreate. We kind of had to do the same thing except you find out you have to ask all your family members you know what do you think can we go ahead with this. We have the same thing except our family happens to be the National Park Service. Historians, historic landscape architects and everyone needs the way in. Everyone needs to agree and then you can go ahead and carry your plan. So in 2003 we managed to do just that. It was a partnership of the National Park Service, the Garden Conservancy and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. Finally came together there's enough movement and interest to restore the gardens and to tell the softer side of the island's history. So with that we had a plan. We went and we surveyed the island about where were the gardens and what could we restore that would best tell the story. So the gardens happen to be all over the island. One of the most common questions I get are where are the gardens and it's those people that just have walked by without looking over the railing to see for themselves but the main road, officers row, the Rose Terrace and then you come around to the west side to look at the cell house slope. The whole west side is garden where the prisoners used to garden. We also needed to be very clear with our mission. We wanted to preserve and maintain the gardens created by those who lived on the island during both the military and the prison penitentiary eras and interpret their history, the horticulture and the cultural significance. I do want to add that the Alcatraz gardens are actually the only cultural stewardship project in the park. So it's a program where volunteers come in and actually steward a cultural landscape versus a natural one where you're promoting habitat. So that's very unique for us. Alcatraz is a national historical landmark so we needed to be very clear focused on what we were aiming to do. We had two guiding documents that are important to mention for the preservation that we do. The cultural landscape report on the left here was kind of like an emergency plan. The longer that we waited, more of the plants were disappearing, more of the hardscape was factoring under the harsh conditions out there. So this was a survey over 200 species of plants were still surviving on the island with all that overgrowth and we determined those five areas to best focus on, documented all the existing plants, all the features and then later on in 2010 the cultural landscape report was developed on the right here. This report is the one that we now follow and this outlines the next 20 years of work for us. So there's a lot that we haven't done yet so there's still years of work to be done which is exciting to think of. So for each of the areas, the five areas, we came up with a treatment plan. The treatment plans take about two months to prepare. They get presented to the National Park Service, the cultural review people. Each report covers the history of that particular garden including all the maps, photos that we can find. We next document everything that's there existing and then the next chapter includes our plans, what we're going to do with it. So plants, watering, the maintenance, funding, how much is going to cost, all of that gets put together and presented. Once we get approval for that then we can go ahead and actually do the work. So we're all really gardeners at heart, everyone involved in the project and we really just wanted to get our hands dirty and dive right into that overgrowth. This is the Lake Corolla Ashford standing in the center and she's actually looking at a photo of the garden they're standing in with two volunteers and as they clear away the overgrowth they can actually find that stairs that shows up in that photograph. So it's really exciting. That's probably one of the best parts of the whole job, clearing away ivy that's covered up some feature for the past 40 years. Speaking of my volunteers, I like to think they come for the work and enjoyment but the views are pretty fantastic out there. It's hard to beat. We have two regular drop-in programs that you have to register for. We take everyone who wants to come as long as you can commit to two months, Wednesdays and Fridays and then we also have a docent program to you that runs. We've logged last year just over 8,000 volunteer hours just gardening alone so with two one and a half staff on the island to look after the gardens it really truly does rely on volunteer gardeners and they are caring at the mission of Freddie Reichel back then of wanting to care for a landscape. Do any of you take photos of your garden? Because we take tons. I'm just going to walk you through some of our before and afters and tell you about some of the challenges that we had for each of the areas. We first started in 2003 clearing away the overgrowth along the main road. This was a military era, 1800s. This is when this was done. We wanted to clear away the overgrowth and retell that period of history. This is how we found it just covered in blackberries and the walnut trees there. In 2014 we managed to turn it around and now it's blooming. There's always something in bloom out there. In this photo, this particular bed, it's really full of survivor plants we call them, so these are the plants that manage to cope on their own without anyone caring for them, any extra water, any pruning. These are the true hearty hearty. If you want to plant a garden in this area, this is what you plant. We have Casamante, the Drosanthemum with nasturtium covering it over, Acanthus, all Mediterranean plants that you would expect to find in this area. Surprisingly, we also had a lot of roses and iris, too, that still managed to cope on their own. Part of the main road is that trough. If you remember back to that photo of the three officers row homes, that line of cannibals was actually this trough. They got rid of the line of cannibals and they put the planter on top, filled with flowers. They actually got rid of the homes in the 1940s with the change of the prison. The maximum inmates didn't make the best neighbors any longer, so they took away those homes and made gardens in the foundations. Here's a little bit more work on the trough. It had to be scooped out of oxalis corns, repaired, and then finally replanted with other polygoniums from the 1940s that we had found. The seagulls, I have to say, really did like them. One of our biggest challenges are the gulls. They want to claim their territory and they love the plants to take that with. That being said, we don't have gophers, deer, or any of that stuff. I'll take the gulls. This is the officer's row. This is one of those foundations of the home that was removed. This is the officers, the medical officer's wife, Mrs. Casey. When she wasn't busy in her own home, she got to work outside in her garden. It's now a cutting garden again. Looking at the photo, we tried to replicate the colors here. This is the officer's home for the medical officer. That one burned down at the native occupation and now, fortunately, it's a restroom, but the garden in front of it, the terraces, is still there. This is when we cleared it away of overgrowth. You can see the same, the railing is still there, still the same curve. Once again, when it's replanted, it really does bloom. Looking completely different. A few of the inmates, I said, were lucky enough to be gardeners outside. Here's one working just watering. I think it really was a privilege to be outside working with that. Again, the same garden in the early morning light. Next, we focused on the rose terrace. Back in the military, this was where they had their greenhouse. It's hard to show. We only have this really one photo of this garden. We tried to look at it and pick out the plants identified from a black-and-white photo. We did pretty well, but we wanted to just keep the focus of it being the center of gardening operation. First, we scattered it out. Here's Cruella again with the first horticulturist. They're looking for any evidence of a garden. The grassy area in the foreground had been cleared once. That's why there's grass and not all the blackberry. But they found a lot of interesting things down there, like the home areas and little bulbs that wouldn't be there otherwise. Looking back, here's the same view. We had to widen the road just for a truck to drive in and make it usable for us, but the eucalyptus tree is still there in the back. We even rebuilt the greenhouse. This is a few volunteers in myself from many years ago, it looks like. This is the historic one in the foreground, and we wanted to rebuild it, but not look exactly like the old one, because we don't want to confuse people about what's new and what's rebuilt. This one actually came as a flat-pack kick down from Canada, so it arrived in the mail. The guys really loved this project, a building project that you can actually see a result from. Watching the volunteers just kind of taking stuff back and letting them figure it out. It always turns out great, but for this, they had all the boxes ripped open, and then parts were being put together, realized it didn't quite work, and then they started reading the directions. It was very typical, but it was very funny. Of course, what would a rose garden be without roses? This is the rare Alcatraz rose that is very famous in the garden world. This one has a great story. It was found growing behind the warden's house, and by a group of Rosarians actually in 1989. Cuttings were taken and was growing up. When we were ready to plant the rose garden, we got this rose back from the native plant nursery in the Presidia who had been tending it all these years. In the meantime, with the millennium coming, and go back to year 2000, the Welsh Museum of Life in Cardiff, Wales was actually building a rose garden, and they were looking for this particular rose. They couldn't find it anywhere in Europe at all. It really was considered extinct, and somehow they found it out about Northern California growers having this rose. They were able to send the rose back to Cardiff, and the first try got lost in the mill and died. The second time actually made it, and now this is growing back in Wales. We actually had a volunteer from Wales who went home, took a picture of it, and sent it to us. We know it's there, and it's one of those unknown stories. We don't know who brought it, or how it ended up behind the warden's house, but it's a great story. Not only do people have stories, but the plants too. Next, we went to that cell house slope. If you remember that pink, sunny, cheerful face towards the city from the military, this is how it was, and what we've been able to do with it again. This whole slope, I have to say, was planted with oxalis. The tiny yellow buttercup, maybe you're familiar with it, but my volunteers spent hours and hours, and thank God for them, and they're right here in the front, weeding it, because it takes the dedication year after year to pull it, just to pull it, and not have it swallowed back up again. But it gets better every year, even with the drought of the past four years. This has been absolutely fine. It hasn't even phased it whatsoever. Last year, you could actually see it from the Golden Gate Bridge, which is a good six miles away, so it really is a cheerful sight. I also want to introduce you to Elliot Michener, one of our favorite inmate gardeners. Elliot has a great story too. He was actually convicted for counterfeiting. This is back in the Depression. He had been working as a newsprint in a newsprint office, and he just thought he could print his own money, so it wasn't very good. He did end up serving 30 years or being sentenced to 30 years in Leavenworth Prison. He was unfortunately involved in an escape attempt, and that earned him the trip to Alcatraz. So I said that you had to earn your way to Alcatraz. That was his ticket. And in a way, it was a little ticket to freedom too. Once he actually arrived on Alcatraz, the guards didn't realize he actually wasn't such a bad guy. He actually found a set of keys on the ground one day, picked them up, and I know what I would do if I was serving 30 years. He actually turned them in, and that gave him the privilege of being a gardener outside then. He was outside, first of all, to pick up those handballs that people had been playing with in the rec yard during their outside time. Finding those keys, though, and turning them back in was probably the best thing he could have ever done. He was really a novice gardener again. He didn't know anything. He just knew he liked being outside, doing something different. And he started guarding below the watch tower. They didn't trust him completely, of course, but he started here and just started gardening away. The guards saw blisters on his hands and actually gave him gloves and had a little bit of sympathy for this guy who was just trying to grow a flower. The guards really just wanted to keep them busy too. So they were happy to let this guy go crazy. Over the next eight years he spent, he really terraced the whole hillside. And lucky for him, he actually became the warden's house boy. So he got to do the gardening and the landscaping for the warden and his wife, made their meals, cleaned up their house a little bit. He actually built the warden's wife, Mrs. Swope, here, a greenhouse that you see right behind her. So in a really weird way, he actually really helped him being out there. This is what Elliott managed to create himself. He salvaged pieces together for his own greenhouse and created this beautiful cottage garden, really again in the most unlikely place ever. On the harshest prison, having the harshest climate, you have this beautiful flowering garden. We have this great quote from Elliott. The hillside provided a refuge from disturbances of the prison. The work a release and it became an obsession. This one thing I would do well, excuse me, it's really powerful that he, through all his trials and tribulations, he managed to just kind of find himself, you know, the worst place, your bottom, you hit rock bottom, and you have this hope of gardening and you cling onto it and it changes your life completely. Elliott eventually did get rehabilitated. His behavior was considered changed through his gardening and he did get sent back to Leavenworth to finish out his sentence. We found a letter actually from Elliott to the warden begging to come back to Alcatraz. He missed his garden so much at Leavenworth. He was just doing the mundane task of checking off the days. But on Alcatraz, he was actually doing something that he liked. He was never allowed to come back though. The prison rules were very strict and we know he got paroled to a dairy farm. He then went on to LA to become a gardener on a golf course down there. And when he came back, he walked through his garden again with Russ Beatty who was doing a Gardens of Alcatraz book. This is what he would have seen though, his gardens being neglected. He did see though his fig tree that he planted and a couple apple trees and he could remember back to those days when he had a part of this landscape. So this is, as we found it, 2007. 2015, it's been completely redone, blew me again. People walking through this garden now can appreciate what Elliott has created and it would have been nice for Elliott to see this as well. Other inmates were lucky enough to be involved in the gardening. They terraced a lot of the hill sides out there and really keep in mind these are people who are not gardeners whatsoever. And there's gladiolas in there, a lot of Shasta Daisies, some uriops that it looks like. And again that same garden as we found it and blooming again. So it really is so satisfying to look back at those old photos of the neglect and be able to stand and talk to people in the garden and have them standing beside a blooming garden. We also did the rec yard slope stairs and the birdbath garden we call it. And these gardens completely eroding. This is where the inmates would have walked through and on their way to work and what we've been able to do with it again. And there's the birdbath we've recreated in the bottom corner. So there's a lot of, let's see what's in here, Mr. Soms, a lot of Pelagonians, osteospermum, some Yaro, and really good plants for the windiest side of the island. And of course underneath all that overgrowth we found some really cool stuff. I can only think Elliot got busy gardening because he missed a lot of hand balls. And even now, like a good 14 years later, we're still finding hand balls. And it's really cool finding the black balls that you see up here. Because you know the last person who held one of those was actually an inmate playing ball. And we never will know when we have found the last one. So it's like when one pops up it's kind of cool. And we also found a lot of spoons, bottles, some random nails. We have found probably one of the weirdest things kind of cool was kind of a spoon with a little kirk in the finger hold for it right outside of the metal detector. So you can kind of guess maybe somebody was thinking of using it as a weapon and then got scared right before the metal detector and dropped it. We're also really focused on sustainability out there. I know it's hard to believe with all the rain lately, but back in I think 2009 it was we installed this water catchment and it's 12,000 gallons that it holds. We actually we used 2,000 gallons to be here. This is actually the gray water settling tanks from the prison showers. In addition to that we added the green tanks on the lawn. Totally that's 12,000 and that matches what we use on the west side for one whole year. So we had been draining it before the end of the year and the soil was never saturated with the drought of the past four years. So this year is hopefully you know saturating the soil and we've already got our tanks filled. So it should be a really good year coming up. We also do composting. We're very focused on that and I have a little video clip. We're on an island and we actually don't have any space and we're really stored on the water. Composting is a really big part of what we do. We're written to sustainable gardening and that's what composting is all about. My process is a hot composting process. I get my dens to 140 to 160 degrees. It's essential for breaking down the material in a timely fashion. And also it's essential for killing weeds so that when we put it back into the soil we're not going to go back. Actually the tea we make is actually worm composting. I have a worm farm out here as well as regular compost. What we do with a worm farm is harvest the castings, the worm castings and we make worm poop tea and that material is used as a spray. It's a nice spray for pest control. Provides microorganisms to make the plants a lot healthier. I just want to add, Dick, he's our worm man of Akshaz and he enters our compost every year into the Marine County Fair. He's a resident of San Enselmo. For the past five years he's won. Unfortunately in this past year he lost to his wife who entered her own compost. So he taught her well. So back to our inmates. So the inmates who had jobs would walk down those stairs that I'd shown you and through the garden, the bird bath garden. And I really want you to picture if you were walking through this garden this is the only bit of greenery you'd have in your whole entire day, every day ever for years and years. And that's what walking through this garden meant a lot to these gentlemen. A few of them would actually pick a little posy of flowers and take back to their cell, you know, giving up their little glass of drinking water, taking the slack from their neighbors for having flowers. And it really meant a lot for these guys to get out of the stinky cell where you could actually smoke still. So, you know, try to think of what it'd be like to be inside. And to walk through here you see the city, smell it, you smell chocolate wafting over from the city, birds, you know, everything is going on, there's so much life outside. We re-grew that garden, the bird bath is still in here. You have the callas, the ursumium and the osteosporum in front. And these are mostly like the best time of year, springtime, that's when everything is just going, going crazy. One of those inmates actually had the luxury of painting watercolors as a pastime. And he chose to paint that same scene. You can see the water, the bird bath down there in the corner. And this gentleman, George Hack, he was in for bank robbery. So he was serving 10 years. He had been married, but when he went into prison, his wife was very patiently waiting. And they dreamed of their future. He finished his time, they went on and they had a family together. That family years later was going through the attic after they'd passed away, after the parents had passed. And they found a series of watercolors, this being one of them. They recognized the city, the city escape there, all the tall buildings. And so they knew this was San Francisco, but they just couldn't really figure out where was this taken from. And they finally figured it was Alcatraz. But talk about big family secrets. They had no idea their father was there. It was a big, just imagine yourself. You find that out. But George knew one day his kids would find the photos, the paintings he'd done, but he couldn't bear to throw away something he loved. So it was his choice to keep them or to throw them out and have a secret safe, but he really chose to keep them. So I think the gardens really meant a lot to people that gets missed if you're just on the cell house tour. So I think the next time, I hope anyway, that you think of the Alcatraz, think of the gardens, think of Freddie Reichel caring for something that somebody else had left behind. Think about Elliott and how he changed his life around. Think about my volunteers working out there, Rainer Shine, and how we're trying to carry on Freddie's mission. And I really hope you get involved with us too. So I mentioned that we have volunteer days every Wednesday and Friday. You're very welcome to come out. We always work like a smile. And it's a great place to be, to meet new friends if you're new to the city. And we don't require you have any skill whatsoever. So as long as you can commit to two months, we really do need docents too. So if you'd like talking to people, sharing, like you'll meet people from all over the world. I have my card come up and speak with me after that. But if you're not up to gardening, we really do want you to come visit. So picking up a self-guided brochure. I do have one at your seat there. You can walk around on a self-guided tour of the island. But I really think the best way is to take one of our free docent tours every Friday and Sunday morning. And you get the full history of the garden. You actually are standing in the places where those historic photos were taken. And after that, you can go do the cell house. We also have a really great website too. And everything is on there. All are before and after questions. A blooming gallery too. So you can really know a lot about the island. I did forget to say there's a quiz. So I also, before the quiz, on your brochures on the back, if you do want to support us, we have a Coral Ashford fund. Coral had passed away in 2009. And we have a memorial fund for her to help support the gardens that she was so passionate about. We also have for purchase our photo book that's upstairs. Has a lot of great shots in there taken by myself and another lady. And I know the ladies of the Floral Legion have their catalog for purchase as well. And now we'll do the quiz. So I apologize. I didn't give you a little heads up, but you should be able to get these. Okay, first one, name three of the five garden areas. Yes, Kelly. Yes, very good. Anyone else that need two more? Prisoners? Okay, good. Okay, what was the inmate Elliot Michener convicted of? Kind of fitting. Oh, okay. What is the secret ingredient in the compost? Worms, yes. Okay, once you're on the island, how much does it cost to take the dosage tour? Free. And what is the name of the organization that runs the day to day? Who I work for? Yeah, I heard it in there. Okay, thank you. Well, thank you so much. It's been a very pleasure to speak with you.