THE CABIN HOUSE

the past 2 weekends have been a bit unusual in that C has been focused on one insane project up on our hill while i've spent my time inside working on a separate project. a nut-job friend of ours got the idea that we need a deck at the top of our hill, and that it needed to be done by august. C happily obliged and the two of them have spent the past two weekends digging 6 enormous holes (in dry clay dirt), hauling 24 80lb bags of concrete up the hill and then carrying concrete footers up after. progress as of last weekend:by now, they've constructed the footers of the deck and will start framing on friday. more photos to come.

while this chaos was unraveling, i quietly set out to collect all of the wild plums in our backyard and make jam. they're not very tasty eating plums but make yummy jam. they're yellow, just larger than a big cherry and require pitting...after 2 weekends of collecting and tinkering i've made 14 jars of sour plum jam, 20 jars of plum lavender jam, 8 jars of plum chutney, 2 jars of pickled plums (per this recipe) and 3 big jars of plums covered in vodka that will hopefully become something lovely in a few months. we still have at least 2 trees that remain covered in plums not to mention the neighbors trees that they're begging me to harvest. any other plum recipes i should try out?