| Wow, sobella! I envy you! :) But I think I can help, since while my fiance and I are renting/single-income/no (living with us) dependents, we seem to otherwise have similar needs...
I try to stay near the LIRR to visit my parents, my fiance does his work mostly in washington heights (very upper west side) and we garden and have indoor/outdoor cats, and I commute to work in SoHo daily. I rented a stabilized apt. in Fort Greene from 1997-2005 which was a fabulous place to be during that time. of course extreme gentrification at the later end of that time resulted in slumlords forcing us (by hook and crook) to have to leave our home and garden. if you can still find something in that area for $800k (maybe a park garden condo or the right fixer-upper) i think it is still a great place to be. very convenient to all transport and roads; right at the LIRR and atlantic/pacific ave (pretty much all subways) and A/C (west-side in manhattan) stops (and G to queens) and still not TOO snobby (not yet park-slope bulldozer/stroller culture) even now (but getting there fast!!). If you can afford it and are not too offended by the incoming whitebread-commuting/restauranting-culture that is now prevailling there, then Fort Greene would be an awesome place to be. There is even the Midtown Greenhouse Garden Center right there in red-wagon-lugging distance near what is now the Atlantic Center. Not cheap, but for neighborhood garden supplies (rae in ny) - even including big delivery stuff (long before lowes and homedepot started reaching these areas) -- it is nice to have around. and the guys there always remembered me and discussed current garden plan stuff,etc with me every visit. Leaving there in 2005 I moved to BedStuy (Nostrand Ave A/C stop) and stayed on the LIRR line as well. While I was sad to be forced to move - evil slumlords closed up the house (that they couldn't even sell for $200,000 back in the late 90s) and forced out 40-60 yr residents as well as us new kids),I was amazed to see kids playing and people partying and conversing in the streets again! During the gentrification process in Fort Greene over that key change-period I had forgotten that neighbors could to know me and to respond to me as a human being and that kids used to play in the street and families would hold parties on their FRONT stoops. I was so glad to be back in that world (even when it got noisy). But then that landlord decided to move into my apartment which I had spent the whole summer seriously overhauling and investing in (we had had a spoken agreement that i would be living there as long as i wanted..let that stand as warning to to anyone who trusts the word of a landlord, EVER) and I had to move again. So after much harried last-minute searching I took an apartment in Crown Heights (but really only a few blocks from my last place).. Name and "official" locale seem to make it still cheaper than "Bed-Stuy" which even in the one year I lived in that area (very near Nostrand/Fulton) has rocketed the rent rates enough for me to have trouble relocating. This area/block is more rental/oldschool than the home-owner-hot bedstuy block the other side of atlantic and therefore more social but perhaps not as child/teen-safe.. but that really depends on your kids and your idea of community i suppose. I am SO tired I can't make my eyes focus anymore so I should go...
more soon or conatct me if you have qestions | 
