Chicken of the Woods

A couple of weeks ago I discovered this striking orange/yellow fungus covering much of a large tree stump in the wood at the top of the hill. It was a gloomy day with very low light, the wood was too muddy for me to get very close, and I only had the compact camera, so the photos were not up to much. A bright morning with heavy frost offered the opportunity to return with the macro lens, confident of somewhat better light - though it's still quite a dark corner - and hoping for firmer ground. The frost had not really penetrated the tree canopy, and the wood was wetter than before, with the tree stump now surrounded by a pool of water and the paths squelchy and very messy, but the fungus was still there, neither eaten nor visibly decaying, and the 105 lens allowed me to perch on the edge of the pool and lean as close as I dared. Chicken of the Woods is edible, apparently tasting, as the name suggests, somewhat like chicken. The extra is one of many dry oak leaves lying on the lane, its shape defined by the crystalline frost. 

The rest of the day was swallowed up by routine tasks and a couple of hours emptying cupboards in a former kitchen which is to be P's new office.  For now, I'm just piling glass, crockery and odds and ends in boxes, but we have nowhere to store it all, so hard decisions lie ahead.