Even more mysterious are lichens. A hybrid organism of alga, bacteria, and fungi, those that are named are named gloriously: Methuselah’s beard, hammered-shield, firedot, crabseye. They grow in the deep desert, they grow over statues like cloaks, they lie over rock faces like accretions of rust. They grow in the ice. They split and grow and abide on such little nourishment as can be afforded by less than the glint of light from an eye. 

A spectrum of lichen

I indulge myself in these fanciful and half-understood terms because now is a good time to know how to grow, even unnourished; how to flourish, in inhospitable places; how to become a hammered shield, and turn to dust, and grow from it. It is a bitter season to think about how to grow when the ground is stony and cold and leached of good.