Leave your mink hat in mothballs and head for the beach. The summer is not over.


Or that's the word from one state weather forecaster, who said Moscow can still look forward to babye leto, the Russian equivalent of Indian summer.


Thanks to a warm front traveling east from Europe, the mercury should rise to 17 degrees Celsius for a four- to six-day period beginning next Sunday, said Roman Vilfand, the director of long-term weather forecasts at the State Meteorological Center.


Babye leto, or "women's summer," earned its name because traditionally women worked so hard during the summer that they had no time to enjoy it. By late September, the crops were in, except for a major cabbage harvest that falls Oct. 14. In the meantime, Russian women were free to enjoy the warmth.


Looking out at a balcony stacked waist-high with preserves, Moscow housewife Natalya Yevsyukova said that concept still has some relevance to her.


"Summer is nice, but the unending jars of tomatoes, the pickled cucumbers, the buckets of blackberries, the vegetables ... ," said Yevsyukova, 36. "You work so hard that there is barely any time to think about yourself."


Yevsyukova is moved to the point of rhapsody by the warm days of early fall. "The leaves are turning, the sun is shining. This is one of the rare times when you live in agreement with your soul," she said.


Others have suggested that the term babye leto stemmed from the aphorism sorok pyat -- baba yagodka opyat, which translates loosely as "At 45, women bloom again." In other words, women regain their lost looks for a brief period in middle age; the meteorological parallel is obvious.


Lyudmila Yakovleva, who was selling berries at Butyrsky market, said babye leto has ended on Sept. 21 ever since Russia adopted the new-style calendar in 1917, and will continue to do so indefinitely.