Across the valley, Inspired Wednesday

This is the view from the top of the house paddock looking north across the valley, ploughed paddocks showing up red.
Weaver of Grass (Pat on my side bar) on her blog has thrown out a challenge to see if we can come up with those who have inspired us.
I find this incredibly difficult as I have so many hats. I suppose in an appreciation of the arts and literature I would first have to say my father, he died the year we were married so 50 years ago, a professor at the university in the field of Botany but one of those who managed to also study arts, the law as well as science.
Books were his passion with painting a close second.
As both my parents painted I didnt. Infact when I married at 19 and lived on a pretty primitive farm I sewed as we had no money and when we had children I made clothes and taught myself to embroider and to smock out of books.
It was as the children grew I started to breed my ponies, all of the Welsh breeds in time, and became a member of that community, which I still belong to, the love of horses probably stemmed from one of my mothers brothers who rode all his life.
Then another phase, my garden Beth Chatto and Christopher Lloyd, although English were a huge influence on how to go about planning a garden using color and positioning plants and many books later I had a garden that was in the Australian Open Garden Scheme. Not any longer, my back and joints began not to like me so I looked for something to do while I waited for them to recover before going out to weed some more.
Into my life came Joy Martin of Things I like, I met Joy at a doll and teddy bear fair and couldnt believe that people made cloth dolls like the ones I saw in Susan Oroyans books, and so became my love affair with cloth dolls and those who taught them. Patti Culea and Barbara Willis were two very influential teachers, and trips to America to look at the doll scene there in the late 1999 and 2001 were an eye opener.
But some where in amongst all that was the desire to sketch and do more with textiles. I honestly think that Jean Littlejohn and Jan Beaney were the ones who started me sketching, textile artists they are but in the first book of theirs I bought so much depended on sketching as well as the use of threads and texture.
They were followed closely, or even possibly at about the same time by my now friend and mentor Dale Rolleson of The Thread Studio, Dale has been terribly influential in her on line Playways group and by the seductive 'stuff' she sells and tells us about.
My art teacher Lorraine Lewitzka has also been very influential, I dont paint any thing like the way she does but she has taught me a huge amount about how to use watercolor and how to paint in my own style.
Books, well this house is falling apart under the weight of books, but wherever my muse has taken me books have been incredibly important, as I have learnt so much from them when I cannot get to a teacher to show me how.
Last but not least, the area I live in and my wonderfully supportive (at times!) husband, who only complains a bit when I buy another book but always tells me that he loves and appreciates what I do.
And now to finish a wonderfully visual Haiku by Buson.

On the temple's great
bronze bell,
a butterfly sleeps
in the noon sun

I think my trips to Japan have also been a wonderful influence.