Lodgers

I found a photo from June 2017 when this lamp was just a wire protruding from the wall. So, in just over six years, lichen has established itself and started growing - quite rapidly, for lichen, it seems to me. The British Lichen Society (there had to be, didn't there) says lichen is "a stable symbiotic association between a fungus and algae and/or cyanobacteria"; in other words, one lichen could be a combined fungus, alga and bacterium or, as I've also heard it described, an ecosystem on a microscopic scale. It's strange, knowing this, that lichens are still named and described as if they are independent species. It's actually quite hard to find out which constituent species make up a particular lichen

The august Society also produces a handy photo-guide. Based on that, I'd say there are two kinds of lichen here: Caloplaca flavescens, the almost luminous pale orange one, and Evernia prunastri, the grey-green branched one. The former is supposed to grow on limestones, walls and gravestones; the latter on branches and twigs of deciduous trees. Strange bedfellows, then, in an unusual bed

The kitchen limewash is finished, at least for now. There is a section that might benefit from a third coat, and I have not yet faced the scary, high bit at the roof apex - that section might get quietly forgotten. The highly reflective surface now shows off the shadows even better