A large gaggle of geese flew past this morning. They haven't gotten really organized yet. Instead of a precise "V," or even a more mundane long line, it looked like a traffic jam.

Perhaps they are trying out for positions on the migration team, although from the larger tangle of geese at the end of the line, it appears that "bench warmer" is the preferred position.

I didn't need the geese to tell me that the season is about to change. Other migrations have begun as well.

Each morning, a different jacket or vest has migrated out to the truck, and each evening -- until yesterday -- it has failed to return to the house. Mornings have been chilly enough to warrant an extra layer, though not yet cold enough to freeze the garden. Afternoons have been in the 80s.

Luckily, before every warm garment I owned was abandoned on the passenger seat, it started to cool down in the evenings, too; not enough to actually put a jacket back on, but enough to remind me that I might want it in the morning.

The geraniums and tomatoes have begun to migrate, too. My neighbor's tomatoes move up onto the porch each evening, and seven huge pots of geraniums move from my front steps into the flower room at sunset.

OK, it's technically a 6-foot by 9-foot "mud room," with only a small south-facing window, but at the moment it is home to 49 plants, many of which are blossoming. That should make it eligible for flower room status, shouldn't it?

I'd like to provide the plants with more light, but that would involve chopping down an 80-year-old spruce tree.

The spruce provides much-needed shade in the summer, but I wish it could migrate to the other side of the yard in the winter. Storms generally hit the house on the northwest corner, and a large spruce would provide some welcome protection.

On the other hand, I suspect the original builder of this house knew what he was doing when he planted the spruce all those years ago. If a windstorm ever topples the big tree, it will most likely land in the adjacent field and not on the roof.

I wonder if I'll ever be that good a "farmer." When the tree was planted, it must have looked small and lost, so far from the house. I would have planted it closer, and probably had to cut it down by now as its roots encroached on plumbing and its branches scraped the walls.

Recent storms convinced the ranch cats to migrate back to the big log barn from their summertime hangout next to the blacksmith shop. When I climbed up into the loft to check on them this evening, Beauregard was so sound asleep that he might have been hibernating.

The former ranch cats have migrated, too. They usually snooze by an open window on whatever side of the house is in shade, but they've switched to their cool weather routine of snoozing in sunny patches.

It's really cooling off this evening. In fact, I think it's time for my woolly socks to migrate back up out of the box in the basement.

Lyndel Meikle works on a Deer Lodge area ranch.