Folly Bowl presents Unpoppable

I love Los Angeles. There are so many things going on, especially in the summer. And when one event can encompass two of my passions…getting to see an amazing garden and having a picnic…I am ecstatic. And then if you add music into the mix, well, that’s just about perfect. Especially if the music is made by a balloon. Curious, aren’t you? First the garden.

The Folly Bowl is a natural amphitheater created by water wise garden designer Susanna Dodds and her husband fine artist, James Griffith.

One of James’ paintings.

And one of Susanna’s (so to speak). I love the mauve paint on the wall. This is by the pool above the Folly Bowl.

Susanna’s use of drought tolerant plants and naturalistic plantings is just gorgeous.

The house sits up on a ridge with the Folly Bowl on one side.

And this amazing canyon of succulents and aloes on the other. I was pretty amazed to see all these plants doing so well in this deep little canyon.

This is the biggest Epiphyllum I’ve ever seen. I can’t imagine what it looks like when it blooms.

Every where you look there is some little surprise. These faces came from a mold the couple found in Spain and carried back with them. They then recast it again and again and inset it into the side of the mountainside walking back up to the house. It’s creepy and cool all at the same time.

The views from the house are incredible…

And the sky is another show going on above the one below.

Several times a year Sue and James open up their incredible property to host events. Sometimes it’s free or there’s a nominal charge that goes straight to the artists. You can bring in your dinner and wine, a blanket and pillow and sit back and enjoy a memorable evening.

Here is not the best picture of Sue and James introducing Saturday night’s event…Unpoppable, which is basically a quartet led by a guy on a balloon. Really, I’m not kidding. It was like nothing I’d ever seen.

Addi Somekh taught himself to be a balloon artist when, he says, he spent 8 months in bed recovering from Lyme’s disease. A self-proclaimed “idiot savant” musically, Addi surrounded himself with some pretty amazing musicians who were making it up as they went along and it was amazing. And in between songs, Addi dazzled us with his real passion, balloon hats.

So of course I had to go to his website and found these photos (all credits to Addi) of his beautiful balloon hats making people happy throughout the world.

This little girl is in Turkey.

And this one makes me so happy I can’t stand it.

So I made two incredible discoveries last night…there is a beautiful natural amphitheater right in Alta Dena that anyone can go to and have a fantastic evening and a balloon makes one hell of a bass! I highly suggest you check out both.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2012 at 7:06 am and is filed under Post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.