Sprout

Richard Bell's Wild West Yorkshire Nature Diary, Wednesday, 17th February 2010

Brussels sproutssproutsTHESE Brussels Sprout were wobbly even before the snows last month but there are still some usable sprouts on them.

It's day two of my new sketchbook and my plan to go out on location and complete a page a day is already proving difficult to keep up to but at four o'clock I downed tools and headed down the garden in the already fading light, adding watercolour as drops of sleety snow began to fall.

loft cornerNogging

My efforts to change the tent-shaped roof-space at the end of my studio into a store cupboard are proceeding at a steady pace. The triangular wall at the left-hand end has been the tricky bit but I've cut chipboard panels to fit and screwed them onto the wooden framework I'd made.

The horizontal piece connecting the two verticals is known in the trade as a nogging, a word which may derive from the Low German knagge, meaning knot or peg.