{"id":67774,"date":"2015-08-13T11:22:56","date_gmt":"2015-08-13T15:22:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=67774"},"modified":"2017-10-30T15:20:24","modified_gmt":"2017-10-30T19:20:24","slug":"lotuslands-abalone-shell-pond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=67774","title":{"rendered":"Lotusland&#8217;s abalone shell pond"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><big>More from my Lotusland visit this past June.  In my guided tour group was a friendly couple with a serious selfie habit, expressed at every turn in a path, at every new feature.  We ended up exploring the garden at the same pace, always at the back of the pack due to our respective documentation proclivities. <\/p>\n<p>In the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lotusland.org\/explore-garden\/gardens\/aloe-garden\/\">aloe garden<\/a> can be found possibly one of Lotusland&#8217;s most theatrical features, the abalone shell-rimmed pool.  Never mind taking a selfie, all I could think about was <em>her,<\/em> the woman who dreamed this up.  The woman who had as many spouses as Henry VIII, at a time when a single divorce would have marked her as a notorious woman And then after the husbands, after the opera career, she settles in to make a garden like no one had ever seen before, selling her jewelry to buy cycads. I find it reassuring to know that Lotusland still outweirds us all.  You just can&#8217;t top it.<br \/>\nIt is Madame Walska&#8217;s enduring &#8220;selfie&#8221; writ large.  Be brave, be fearless, is the caption.  And if you are a woman in 1941 with outsized dreams, it doesn&#8217;t hurt to be very, very rich.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i52.photobucket.com\/albums\/g23\/botanizeme\/june2015venturasbtrip\/1-_MG_1882.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo 1-_MG_1882.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i52.photobucket.com\/albums\/g23\/botanizeme\/june2015venturasbtrip\/1-_MG_1881.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo 1-_MG_1881.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i52.photobucket.com\/albums\/g23\/botanizeme\/june2015venturasbtrip\/1-_MG_1883.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo 1-_MG_1883.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i52.photobucket.com\/albums\/g23\/botanizeme\/june2015venturasbtrip\/1-_MG_1884.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo 1-_MG_1884.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i52.photobucket.com\/albums\/g23\/botanizeme\/june2015venturasbtrip\/1-_MG_1880.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo 1-_MG_1880.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i52.photobucket.com\/albums\/g23\/botanizeme\/june2015venturasbtrip\/1-_MG_1879.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo 1-_MG_1879.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i52.photobucket.com\/albums\/g23\/botanizeme\/june2015venturasbtrip\/1-_MG_1875.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo 1-_MG_1875.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/big><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More from my Lotusland visit this past June. In my guided tour group was a friendly couple with a serious selfie habit, expressed at every turn in a path, at every new feature. We ended up exploring the garden at &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=67774\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[112],"tags":[971],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paNJ2E-hD8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67774"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67774"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81211,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67774\/revisions\/81211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}