We've had a genuine killing frost and so, with the temperature today well up in the 60s, we can now properly call the weather pattern an Indian Summer. Ever since a French-American upstate New York farmer and soldier named Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecœur first used the term in print around 1778, IS has been a hallowed and much anticipated part of New England meteorology and tradition. It's certainly paying us a visit, and this afternoon, the air was lush with warmth and insects, among them a squadron of large queen Polistes wasps, all of them coming out of colder-weather refuges to bask in the summer, perhaps for the last time until spring, and to look for one final meal before going back into hiding. Fortunately, the mamas-to-be wasps weren't interested in stinging, so I could get quite close for a late-season portrait.