Book club

 For several years, a group of friends and I gathered for a literary workshop under the guidance of a truly wonderful teacher. During the pandemic, several of us decided we had had enough of Zoom--everything was Zoom, it was exhausting--and the club then lost the teacher who was given an important job chairing a literary seat at the state university. 

Finally we have gotten back together at the host's home each Wednesday, and our trial of another teacher was sadly unsuccessful since several people didn't like him. Now we are on our own, and it works rather nicely.

Our first selection was The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdi. This is a hard book to read because it is very long, it is in the realm of magic realism, it is layered with symbolism and meaning, and it feels so very wild! It is a brilliant book, with some glorious comic moments. I began reading Midnight's Children, curious if all Rushdi's books are vast and roam the world, but this one is different. It is a delight. It is also easier to read!

Then we took on Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. A marvelous book in spite of the underlying theme of trauma and slavery, of generational suffering, shot through with moments of enlightenment and connection. I am reading Beloved by Morrison, another stunning adventure in literature. 

The book club itself is such a relief from the suffocating boredom of each day. Two of my best friends are in the club, and the host, a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, is the personification of kindness and good humor. 

There is, however, a major pain in the ass in the club too, damn it. I call her the Kafka Woman, since when she first entered the group, she seemed to relate everything in life to Kafka. That seems to have faded away, thank the Force, but she has something irrelevant to say about every single idea that is tossed around in the club. My friend Nancy periodically says, "Now, returning to the book..." in order to get Kafka Woman to shut up. She didn't attend the club for a long time, but her husband has taken an interest in it, so that means she will show up because he will show up. Crap! He does not know me and kept looking at me during the session--not because of my looks, believe me, folks, I am proudly an old swamp witch--and I fear he is too interested in my long-gone fame as an editorialist for our local newspaper.

Again, crap!

On another front, the drought-tough grass we had put in seems to be growing, but there is another kind of grass poking its way up through the sod that needs to be pulled. I aint going to do that. It is hotter than Hell's waiting room today, and I am too tired and sore to take on the job. I would happily mow the lawn with my manual mower if that were the job, but not the bending and pulling to get that rogue grass out.

I am propagating desert willow; I have one that is large and a new one recently planted. I have some cuttings and seeds in pots waiting to see which pots produce a tree. These glorious drought and heat resistant plants produce beautiful flowers that are magnets for my hummingbirds. My other plants are doing both great and oddly. My lemon tree is going like gangbusters in a pot, thanks to some fantastic fertilizer pods, my chile serrano is bumby and too small, my sweet basil is doing fine but has to be protected from the godawful sun. After I first used the lemon fertilizer pods, the next day the soil was dug up and the pods gone. I blamed possoms and covered the area with hot sauce to discourage them. But the next day, the same disaster occurred. Turns out it was my dog Pecas. The pods contain animal elements that must smell wonderful to a dog, so now the whole lemon tree pot is covered with permeable cloth tied down and weighed down. 

The dog is fine. Seems the pods are tasty and harmless.