intractable fungus

Two summers ago I cleared the understory in the back yard. I stacked all the long skinny maple trunks at the edge of the yard and forgot about them (after the next door neighbor bristled at my interpretation of the property line).

This summer, after months of frustrated desire for a back yard aesthetic paradigm shifter, I took a couple of the trunks from the pile and painted them (gradients of pink and blue respectively).

It was a pretty cool effect:

Last night I went out to wrap some lights around the blue one, and rather miraculously I think, some fungus spores had managed to either a). lodge themselves before it was painted and then poke out through the paint or b). lodge themselves into the tree through the paint and sprout out through the same holes whence they had inpoked. Either way: pretty!