Dragonflies

I walked down to the turtle pond after lunch today. The turtles were skittish, plopping into the water as soon as they saw me coming, but the place was swarming with red-gold dragonflies. They zipped and zoomed over the green water and among the palm-fronds, only rarely lighting for a moment, chasing one another in circles; some of them were two or three inches long with a corresponding span to their double, intricately veined wings. Perhaps it was that rapid-moving presence that made the turtles so nervous, or maybe it was just the heat that made them less sluggish than I'm used to seeing them.

There are butterflies, too, big yellow-and-black swallowtails mostly, flapping around just out of range.

Aha!

According to Locus and Amazon, the next of Cherryh's Foreigner series is due out in February. Which is fairly amazing, if that's the one that according to her blog she finished writing a couple of weeks ago! I was pretty much resigned to waiting until much later next year for that one.