Alien growth

What a wonderful home-bound day I've had.  Didn't go out on any trips as I'd thought I probably would but instead I pottered around home......some cleaning, some tidying, some fixing, some re-organsing,  some computer catch-ups, some cooking, a little phone chatting and a whole heap of contentment.  Feeling ready now for the great-house-wash which should happen next week.  Not a favourite job, but necessary in order to preserve the paintwork as long as possible.

Part of my pottering involved a little re-organisation on the back deck.  It was whilst doing this that I found a piece of railway sleeper (ie hardwood) that had a bunch of these very odd loofah-like things growing on it.  Initially I wasn't sure if it's a fungi or maybe some eggs but now I see the images a bit closer on the big screen it's looking more like fungi.  Whew - though I may be wrong.  If anyone can help out with identification that would be awesome.  I've added another image to give a broader perspective though my big error was not including something that provides a sense of scale.  They're no more than about 7 or 8 mm long and look almost like some sort of coral.  If you look at the extra you can see some super teeny weeny ones on the top left of the image (which is a poor quality phone pic).  Would love to know what it is.......

IN COVID news, there were 103 new cases today, 70 people are in hospital and 5 in ICU.  Here in Nelson there were no new cases today.