No more digging - please!

After a week of digging in the garden in every spare moment, after work, every day on the Easter bank holiday weekend, and most of yesterday, my back has given up and said "No more!".  I also have mental digging fatigue. So today we are having a day off apart from I moved the last few bulbs this morning.

But we've done it: we've moved probably upwards of 40 plants and shrubs big and small, including an apple tree and a large Sambucca Niger, plus loads of bulbs, day lilies, irises etc, - hitting our deadline of moving things before they burst into growth in most cases. The concrete path is all gone, the hardcore dug out of the bed areas and we've started to fill it in with 'lawn bricks' cut from other parts of the garden that we've turned into beds.  The future patio area (out of picture to the right)  is now devoid of plants.

You can see the 'snowman' lawn taking shape, and we've marked out the future path and central circle.  We inherited so many plants (which were all higgledy-piggledy on top of each other) that I 've been able to fill out most of the new border area without spending anything, although we did buy one evergreen Juniper Skyrocket to plant in an empty space by the back fence.  The things we've moved in the front and back garden are not obviously dying yet, although some of them are probably still trying to work out what's suddenly different (like the apple tree which did not retain much of its root structure so could be doomed).

So not a lot of crafting this week apart from slumped in exhaustion in front of the telly in the evenings.

Updates

• I've joined together four quarter-stars with background triangles on my Lone Star Quilt, and am starting to add on the corner squares.
• I've seamed together the knitted Denim shoulder bag, sewed a lining stiffened with fusible fleece, and have partly sewn the lining in.
• I've turned the heel on the Basket weave socks.

• I've finished knitting the Reversible Cowl so just need to block it and seam it.

• I cut the felt armour for the Clanger and appliqued it on using silver metallic thread, and gave him some felt hair so he is now finished. DH really likes him.

• I'm almost finished the penultimate Clue 8 on the Mystery Battle of Five Armies Shawl. Not sure about this one. It's a half-Pi shawl and seems to be a rather arbitrary mashing together of stitch patterns. Perhaps I will like it better when it's got an edging and is blocked.

• I've been appliquing the next square in my 25-block hand applique quilt, this is a square from the Rose Quilt Supreme book, scaled up in size. After I finish the other two flowers, there will be leaves around the circle.

• I finished Pricking 5 in bobbin lace after making lots of mistakes (left in picture). But I'm getting better at spotting my mistakes and unravelling to fix them. I'm taking a break from samples to try a simple two-colour Torchon Bookmark using a design that one of my lace group ladies developed. This one is for DH and I will make another one for my m-i-l. I picked up a few more nice wooden bobbins from an antiques fair we went to last weekend, priced very reasonably at .50p and £1 each. So gradually I am replacing the nasty plastic bobbins. We didn't buy anything else there but had a lot of fun looking - antique fairs/shops are like museums where you can touch everything, it's great.

• I've started the next square in the GAA Afghan, which requires knitting a plain square first and then a miniature Aran sweater which is appliqued to the plain square.

Actually, now that I've listed it all out, it feels like I got more done this week than I realised.  I think it's because suddenly there is so much television to catch up on, with a lot of shows back from their mid-season break like Elementary, Marvel's Agents of Shield, Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, Suits, Vikings, 12 Monkeys, Mad Men etc. So I'm spending a lot of time on the sofa knitting or sewing.

How is your garden looking?  Are you doing any digging?