How Can I Keep From Singing?

Dear Diary,

For Christina.

My life goes on in endless song
Above earth's lamentations,
I hear the real, though far-off hymn
That hails a new creation.

Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear its music ringing,
It sounds an echo in my soul.
How can I keep from singing?

While though the tempest loudly roars,
I hear the truth, it liveth.
And though the darkness round me close,
Songs in the night it giveth.

No storm can shake my inmost calm,
While to that rock I’m clinging.
Since love is lord of heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing?

When tyrants tremble in their fear
And hear their death knell ringing,
When friends rejoice both far and near
How can I keep from singing?

In prison cell and dungeon vile
Our thoughts to them are winging,
When friends by shame are undefiled
How can I keep from singing?


Robert Wadsworth Lowry

It will be a quick little blog today. It is a sunny day and not the weather to be stuck at the computer. I have just spent three hours in the garden and it was so enjoyable. I imagine it to be how Heaven would/should be. Sunshine, flowers, birds, bees, butterflies and animals for company. Pottering is one of my passions, wandering from one job to another and I would be quite happy to be a gardener in the next world.

I have been planting my three new rambler roses, (David Austin’s of course). Also another hardy fuchsia to remind me of the west of Ireland as my soul is feeling just a little bit homesick. And finally I have planted a little salvia from the plant sale last week.

This is an clready- established climber rose in the front garden.

My study window is the upstairs one.

I could spend all day pottering outside but I am stopping myself from doing so as I always overdo it and consequently I wear myself out. So I have come up the wee cottage stairs and am sitting by my window; my desk has a spectacular view out over green fields and my beloved little river of course, she is quite low at the moment. The dogs love to go and stand in it and drink the pure mountain spring water.

I’ve spent another hour digging out a bit more of the blasted ground elder that has taken over one of my large flower beds. It is exhausting toil in this heat so I only do an hour at a time before moving on to the ‘lighter’ and more pleasant tasks.

As I type this I am listening to my blog music and it is so wonderful. Alison Crowe is singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah and I am very quietly singing along (M is downstairs watching the tennis). Safin isn't playing otherwise I would be watching too :-). When I am alone I'm always singing; I don’t hold back then but wouldn’t inflict my full volume on anyone else’s ears. I so love to sing: when alone in the house, out walking, or driving in the car and I have to stop myself at work or when I am idly wandering round in shops!

Apparently I used to sing all the time when I was in a cot.

Ah well, nothing changes.

But if I have to come back to Earth again then in my next life I want to have a really wonderful singing voice, perhaps like Enya?

I did a bit of research on the J Haptogroup last night. (see previous blog). Seems we came from Syria and we are one of the younger groups being a mere 10,000 years old. Some are 45,000 years old. What that means I don’t know.

Here is a pic M took the other day. Cloudwatching is one of my passions too.




Hope you like all the photos; they are M’s work so I can’t take the credit.

The kite was in the sky today and the sky, well it was above us.

I hope the sun isn’t shining on Bush and Brown in London today.

I nearly typed Bush n’ Blair. Isn’t it funny how those two surnames seemed to be joined at the hip?

All three are ‘B******’s’ if you ask me.

Here is a quotation for each of them.

If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.
- Moshe Dayan

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
- Dwight David Eisenhower

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind...War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.
- John F. Kennedy

I will love you and leave you and hope you are all enjoying sunshine, cloudless skies and peace today.

Bye for now,
Go mbeannai Dia duit,
Caitx