It has been cold and raining for two days. Today the sun is out; the kids next door are playing basketball in their drive; and my wife and I spent the afternoon planting summer annuals in two of our pots. These are our front door “welcoming” pots, so it’s important that they get a good start. Driving about this morning it dawned on me that blossoms were bursting forth on dogwoods, azaleas and the wild wisteria that is taking over parts of the nearby woods. Were they there two days ago before the rain? Had I just not noticed them? It seemed to me that today they suddenly burst forth; they were “first sightings.”

Listening to the radio I heard a wonderful old standard from the American Songbook: What a Difference a Day Makes! (Music and lyrics by Stanley Adams, Jeremy S. Stover, and Maria Grever, Lyrics ©The Songwriters Guild of America, Universal Music Publishers Group).

The first lines described perfectly what I was experiencing:

What a difference a day makes, Twenty four little hours.                                                 Brought the sun and the flowers, Where there used to be rain.