The Tenacity of Life, or Lack Thereof

I'm building a stone wall. Living on an old New England plot that used to be farmland generations ago, there are remnants of the former clearings in the shape of boulder piles. These rocks are perfect for constructing a stone wall, and I've had a hankering to build one ever since I moved here to Rhode Island ten years ago.

So up it goes. The piles have been there so long that the outer stones are covered in lichen...so I've saved the best of these for the wall topstones. They give my new wall the street cred of something ancient.

Now lichen are weird. Dry crispy blue green flakes of life that take decades to grow, subsisting on air, ambient moisture and rock. When we find alien plant life, I think much of it will resemble lichen.

Another slow growing plant we have a lot of is moss. Last year I accidently stripped a large section of moss from the south side of our yard, very close to the house. The soil beneath was dark brown and very rich looking.  I thought about reseeding it with grass, but never got around to it. Then when I walked by it one day last fall I resolved to leave it alone, just to see what Nature, abhorer of vacuums, would insert in its place. I've been checking this tabula rasa regularly ever since.

So what has Nature provided me with? Absolutely NOTHING. I have boulders and piles of boulders covered with rock-sucking lichen that might thrive on the Moon, but here's a 10 square foot patch of rich soil, that used to support moss, for peat's sake (pun intended) with no signs of life whatsoever.

What gives?