Belated new year's resolution

Over the last few weeks, I've been nursing a truely horrible viral infection (I presume), which I've discussed in slightly more detail on my other blog (which is (mostly) a discussion of the dismal last sputterings of my reproductive system). I'm kind of hoping I'm on the upward path away from this dismal period, although I've been thinking that for ages now. During my many hours of shivery, diseased surfing, I've read a lot of blogs that were new to me, and I've been interested to see how grippingly interesting the day by day doings of other families are. Not just those who are dealing with major issues, such as infertility, but also those who discuss their day to day lives running a household of four sons, or dealing with life as a US Army wife. And I can't help but see, reading through my own limited archives, that I'd find the detailed account of our own family doings, day by day, just as riveting, a few years down the line.
So I want to try to do a bit more ordinary family blogging, even if I don't have much to say, because the ordinary stuff is just as worth recording as anything else.
This inaugural post of the new regime is illustrated with a photo of our Mizuko tree (see other blog for details), taken last May when it was in full leaf, because I wanted to try out the new Blogger photo uploading, which has been introduced since the last time I posted an image.

It's an ordinary Saturday night. John is just back from New York State, where the snow is a foot deep and people are climbing out of their bedroom windows to dig out their front doors (unlike here, where the snow was an inch deep and has now been washed away by rain.) My mother is on her penultimate night of her two month stay with us, about to go back home and see if she can manage on her own now her broken leg's mended. J is doing some sort of complicated Maths homework, doing an area plan of an imaginary garden, with a lot of paternal input. E, risen like Lazarus from a lurgi that's laid her low for the last two days, is not here but at a friend's house for a sleepover, armed with her Nintendo DS and a bottle of disgusting cherry flavoured paracetamol. For supper, we had skate from the farmer's market, with purple sprouting broccoli (ditto) and lemon and parsley sauce (parsley from Israel, less ecologically). And now I'm going to upload this and admire the result.