Monday, April 7, 2008

April Fool's Day Surprise...

On April 1st I experienced a once-in-a-lifetime coincidence at the local horticulture club meeting. Several weeks before the 1st, I made plans to attend the horticulture club meeting upon recommendation from a Bison Range board member, Doug Floto. Then I got a call at work from the president of the club, Mike Ramsey, who was looking for someone from the Division of Water Resources to do a presentation about the non-native shrub/tree called salt cedar/tamarisk. I agreed to do the presentation because in grad school at North Dakota State University I helped give educational seminars about salt cedar identification and control.

Fast forward to April 1st. I went to the Finney County Extension office for the hort club meeting, and as I pulled in the parking lot there was another car pulling in and I noticed the driver looking really hard at something. I assumed the person was new to the club like me and was just looking to see if he was in the right place. So I went inside the building and found the meeting room and headed out to my car to get the laptop and projector for my presentation. I opened the door and standing there was a guy I knew from grad school in Fargo, ND. In fact, he worked on part of my grad school research project. We had no idea each other was in Garden City. What a shock! It took me a couple seconds to recover and shout "Ankush! What are you doing here?", which is probably what he was wondering about me!

Turns out that Ankush has been in Garden City for only a month working at the KSU extension research station as an entomologist (insect biology). He came to the hort club meeting because he heard the topic was salt cedar control by insects, but I bet he never imagined I would be the one giving the presentation! I laughed at his email the next day which said "April has never fooled me better". I found out that his wife (from New York City) and 10-month old daughter will be arriving in Garden City in 2 weeks. I hope to make them feel as welcome as my co-workers did for me about 17 months ago!


If running into Ankush wasn't weird enough... later that same week I got a visit from another grad school friend. Lesley from Cavalier, ND (see January post about Manhattan), was in southwest Kansas with her boyfriend Mike and we spent a day going to the zoo and bowling before they headed to Dodge City and then Ashland for a bull sale, which is why they were in the area. I had to laugh because the temperature here was a cool 50 degrees but they were loving it because in northeastern North Dakota there is still snow on the ground!