I made a quick trip to the Kansas City area this weekend.  A one-way flight on Friday late afternoon took me 450 miles south of Minnesota.  The sunset was stunning and the landscape below is always interesting.  A pattern of fields and rivers, valleys and hills, and eventually roads with car lights that dot the lines from horizon to horizon.  But what was more noticeable to me this time, was the difference in the seasons.  Leaving Minnesota, our grass is brown and our lakes still have some ice on them.  Snow is still visible in protected areas.  But once I was in Kansas City I realized what a difference 450 miles makes in the seasons.  The magnolia trees were in bloom, the bright yellow of the forsythia was glowing, and daffodils were showing their golden faces.  Even the grass was no longer brown, and fields of winter wheat were a beautiful green.  The drive home made the seasonal difference even more noticeable.  Throughout northern Iowa and southern Minnesota grasses in the fields were visibly packed down from the weight of the recently melted snow, and there was a demarcation line that the red-winged blackbirds had not crossed yet in their journey to the north.  Green grass will take-over in Minnesota, and flowers will bloom, and the blackbirds will be in our neighborhood, but nature hasn’t stretched her warm hands this far north yet.