Frosty lugs

We have been locked in nature's deep freeze for the last week or so. 

Despite it all the fungi known as jelly or Jew's ears (Auricularia auricula-judae) are grimly hanging on to life in the back garden.


My father was brought up in the wilds of Northern Canada where winters were, to say the least, extreme. He always insisted that it got so cold that people's ears would freeze solid and then shatter if touched. He was a good story teller!