Hi all, hello to new people, cliquey secret handshakes and gin-clinking winks to veterans! Three weeks post baby and I have done a little bit in the garden, yay! I am not entirely unscathed from the birth though so still taking things rather gingerly... Except for the three trips into London I've done with the girl in a sling, which I now slightly regret. She was just under 4kg at birth and is now 4.7, so a 20% increase, and my core/abs/pelvic floor muscles are now squealing at the effort it takes to pick her up, especially from an awkward/lying down position in the middle of the night four times a night ... But enough of my grumbles, that stuff belongs on a postnatal thread not here!
At the weekend DH presented himself to me as a willing garden slave, and DS joined in too. I got them to dig in the asparagus crowns from a pretty useless tall 'plasti-canvas' planter to the ground, and at some point we will make that patch a raised bed. He tipped the entire bin full of last year's leaf mould on the rhubarb crowns (must spread it a bit or they will risk going to rot). Dug out a tansy clump that is no longer pleasing to me, and I was then inspired to do a little digging myself once I had seen how workable the soil is. I moved/divided some astilbe that I had been meaning to deal with since the spring, detached ten little strawberry plants in mini pots from their runners (felt like cutting the umbilicus!), and moved some self seeded v. bonariensis around to spread them more regularly along the border. Did quite a bit of weeding, and chucked all the detritus on the lawn which was very lush, having not been mowed for at least a month. We usually put lawn mowings in the compost bin because as long as it is mixed up with our kitchen veg scraps and shredded paper, it doesn't just go to mush. But with all the weeds this time, and lots of mowed-up prunings and woody stuff, I decided this time it should go in the brown bin.
Yesterday (as we are both at home most of the time, mat leave for me, career crossroads for DH) we were inspired to plan our front garden project. I regaled a previous Potting Shed thread at great length about my patriotic bee/butterfly/moth friendly red white and blue cottage garden design in early 2012... Well it just didn't work. The allegedly RWB buddleias from J Parkers all turned out purple (as did the 'pink' and 'black' ones also in the set of five). 
The RWB phlox from J Parkers all turned out white, pretty, but white. The acidanthera were lovely but late, the gladioli were a good red and white but short lived, and the irises were the right blue but a lot earlier than the gladioli. Successes: the sweet rocket (white), the moroccan mint, and the comfrey (purple flowers) all romped away, and the super cheap 12 lavender 'hidcote' plugs from (surprisingly) J Parkers filled out very well and very quickly to become a really nice path edge-hedge.
Anyway, DH wants to use the front garden as a parking space, which you could sigh and bemoan as the inevitable march of concrete upon suburbia... But which I take as a challenge to do nicely and with as much pollinator-potential as the overgrown cottage garden mess did. We have to go diagonal due to the size of the space (4.5x4.7m) and the need to use an existing dropped kerb in front of our neighbour's house, as we know the council won't approve another for us. I have in mind a gravel garden under the car (protected from frost by the car itself in winter!), a load of scented ground cover between bricks where you get out of the doors and walk on it, and raised beds in the free corners with bigger plants or herbs that enjoy the south facing aspect.
First step (Sunday and next week) is to dig up what plants/bulbs I want to salvage and pot them up. The front is riddled with very bad weeds (horsetail, creeping buttercup) so I can't dig in these plants in the back garden while the work goes on, I'm going to have to keep them in quarantine out the front. Then we'll napalm er I mean glyphosate all that remains, give it a little while to act (while there is still some growing going on that takes the poison message down into the roots). Hopefully by November we will have some work starting on digging out the soil to however deep the engineering requirements of a drive are, putting down a proper membrane right to the edges and getting the foundation layers in. The planting of the paving cracks and raised corner beds won't happen until the spring, it's likely.
Here endeth the embarrassingly long Epistle!!