Over the last few weeks this tree stump has become covered in varicoloured bracket fungi - possibly because it was damaged by vandals during the summer, giving an entry to the spores. It's one of a row of stumps at the Open Air School site, where the trees were blown over in a gale years ago. Most of them have regrown from the remains of their trunks lying on the ground - they're known as 'phoenix trees', The whole site must be very fertile, judging by the amount of regrowth since the school burnt down 40 years ago, and by the amount of tidying up members of the group do every month!
The site also seems to be a good one for fungi this year - these 'Dead Man's Fingers' are growing around a couple of ground-level stumps. They're very dark now, but when they first appeared they were brown with slightly pinkish-brown tips, and spookily realistic.
Our Centenary Day on Saturday was successful, and the sun even shone for a while. It was interesting that many visitors had been at the school either when it was a special school or after the war when it was a temporary school for many children. Everyone had happy memories of being there.
CA
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