when my worlds collide

I love it when things come together -- when parts of my life that seem disconnected from each other are connected after all.

Last month Blair and I were at the AHS Region 4 meeting hosted by LIDS (i.e., a daylily meeting). At the Chinese auction we won was a crate of upstate wines. There were ten assorted bottles of wine (and two small bottles of coffee-infused vodka) in the crate. The crate was put together by the Hudson Adirondack Daylily Society (which, like LIDS, is part of Region 4) with donated bottles from upstate wineries.

Ann Amrtini
K. Rood, 2017

We noticed that one of the bottles was a red table wine from Anthony Road Wine Company. The significance of this is that AR is one of the vendors at the Jackson Heights Green Market -- one of the farmers markets that Ethan and I go to every Sunday. John Martini, who founded the winery with his wife, Ann, in the 1970s, is one of the people we chat with at the market. We've always liked his wines.

Anyway, so this morning Ethan and I were at the market and I decided to mention to him that we had won one of his bottles. Of course, he knew what we were talking about. Turns out his farm is near Kathy Rood, a prominent upstate daylily hybridizer. Kathy, he told us, had even named one of her cultivars after his wife, Ann Martini. He'd never actually seen the flower named after his wife, but he knew it was out there.

Well, with my phone in hand I was able to look it up for him. It's a beaut.

Small world