Post festum magic

Polychromatic turkey tails and the frosted antlers of candlesnuff fungus seem especially appropriate to this week's nameless interregnum between the celebration of the Christian nativity and the shift from one calendar year to the next. Both are  human artifacts that most of us in the modern world have come to take for granted although they have no relevance to what is actually happening in our natural environment. There must still be dwindling numbers of people to whom neither festival has any relevance (quite apart from infants and the dying) just like  our distance ancestors

As it happens this mildest of winters has been exceptionally good for fungi in Britain. Hereabouts we've had only one frosty morning this year.