Last year’s fruit harvest was pretty lackluster, but the trees in the backyard have made up for that shortfall with an abundance of produce. After the cherries, the next crop to come in was from the plum tree. And come it did, a relentless torrent of tasty spheres. Wave after wave of plums swamped the kitchen, far too many to eat, or even to foist off onto the neighbors, like some kind of round, purple zucchini.

So what do you do with that many plums? They’re not freestone fruits, so they’re a complete bitch to pit (ruling out jam), and I haven’t the patience or equipment to make slivovitz or sake. That leaves jelly. So I made plum jelly. And made plum jelly. And made plum jelly. And made plum jelly. And made plum jelly. And made plum jelly. And made plum jelly. And made plum jelly.

It turns out “that many plums” translates into somewhere in the neighborhood of eight gallons of plum jelly. So far. Though the jelly-making ceased when the plum harvest finally, mercifully petered out, I still have enough frozen plum juice to make another couple gallons of the stuff. I’ve given away about three quarts so far, leaving me with just over seven gallons. As I was struggling to find a place to put the last batch, I suddenly wondered what it would all look like all piled up together. What does seven and a quarter gallons of plum jelly look like?

It looks like this.

Lest you think this is just a façade, here’s the side view.

Aaaand the back.

In addition to innumerable plums you’re also looking at about fifty bucks worth of glass and lids, and somewhere close to forty-five pounds of sugar, to say nothing of the water used during the canning process. Previously, the kids would always tell me they liked plum jelly so much they could eat some every day. They’ve been strangely silent on the issue this year. Can’t imagine why.