Lichen It (or Not)

I certainly would not be the first person who said, "Lichen growth is an unreliable indicator of time."
Walk down my driveway with me and I'll show you what I mean...

That big stone on the flower bed was pushed out of place by some lilac roots from on top of the upper retaining wall (probably built in 1850 from the recycled stones from the original central chimney of my possibly circa 1700-10 "at least begun to be built" home, the chimney replaced by a brick one when the house was modernized by Samuel Atwood, a descendant of Woodbury's first doctor, Jonathon Atwood). Keep in mind that this retaining wall soon blends into a zigzag stone row on this side of the Indian Trail, still known as Nonnewaug, with another zigzag stone row bordering the other side of the road (which shows quite well in aerial photography taken in 1934 and is now only a remnant of its former self, much like me).
   Update: the retaining wall does show stone tool marks, but by the spring of 2016 many elements of Native American Iconography were identified in this and other stonework I had long assumed were Euro-American in origin. Dr. Curt Hoffman added them to a database he continues to compile and filed a site report, adding this wall and others to his list of (I think he said) 7,000 sites. (5/17/2016)

I placed these cobbles on the fallen boulder and none of them had any remarkable amount of lichen growth on them when I did, unlike the boulder whose lichen growing career probably started in earnest around 1850. I'm going to make a guess that I placed the stone all the way to the left in the photo on the boulder in around 1997 - or a little after - because that's when I saw my first "without a doubt" Native American made Tobacco Offering Bear Effigy. The others were placed there, one at a time over the years, picked up somewhere close by or dug out of the flower bed - or fallen into the driveway from the second retaining wall made for  this flower bed...

It looks like it has about the same amount of lichen growth (see how it almost blends into the boulder in the second view of the top of the stone), and a person could be tempted to say that this might prove that the stones were placed there at the same time, but they weren't. A bunch of dry summers (one really dry summer comes to mind) slowed the growth, while I also recall a really wet summer when all sorts of mold and fungi began growing everywhere, especially the Black Rust I think people were calling it, on my tomatoe plants. Originally it looked much like the underside when first placed there...

It's much the same story with the other stones I later placed there...

There were a figurative ton of interesting crystals in the on this cobble (same stone above and below).

This one below is a possible Nutting Stone, used to crack nuts (or acorns), found nearby, about two or three hundred feet from the probable mast forest resource zone to the western hilltop, where early roads and cart paths lead down to the early 1700's mill on the river...

These two, which have almost no lichen on them, I put where I did because the type of rock/stone matched up well, especially with that high degree of probability that these stones were "borrowed" from the nearby Testudinate Stone Mounds up by my old Chicken Coop because it was an Easy Thing To Do, a factor you should always take into consideration when dealing with Human Behavior. These two fit the pattern of a headstone and a left foreleg. The headstone also has another repeated feature, a depression that easily accepts a clam shell for a tobacco offering...

People seem to enjoy driving into this flower bed wall along my driveway and I pick up what falls and put them on top of the former chimney stones, fine examples of colonial stoneworkfrom circa 1700, hammer marks from when they were quarried and drilled holes, possibly for the keeping room fire place, those old "kitchen fireplaces" where colonial moms (or servants) were cooking stuff on spits or in those metal pots that they hung from hooks and all, just like you see in paintings and houses turned museum.
Will these stones placed on the quarried chimney stones get covered with lichen as well?
Will I ever be able to put all the turtles together again, with no King's Horses or King's Men to help me put them back together again after the Egg was Scrambled?
 

Maybe I'll use the Grandfather Trick and say to my Grandkids, "I'll bet you can't make some turtles out of these stones - a dark one, a light one, a red one, maybe one with a light brown head and green feet..."