Matt Merritt sent me this, after reading the last post:
“There’s another old British name for Indian summer, which you almost touch upon. It used to be known as ‘Goose Summer’, probably because it was a time of year at which fattened geese were slaughtered for eating. It’s also possibly because it coincided with the annual arrival of huge flocks of wild geese and swans from their Arctic breeding grounds – the main migration is usually in October.
‘Goose summer’ eventually became corrupted to ‘gosssamer’, which was then applied to the strands of spider web that are particularly visible at this time of year.”
I love this!