These plums, and this marmalade, are proof of the power of optimism to create change. Even when things look bleak. Now with a new PS about overcoming perceived failure. (Read on below the image >>)

A few years ago, our plum tree got infected with the dreaded “brown rot”.

I was too busy with work to take care of the problem, and it steadily got worse. All the fruit would develop an awful fungus infection before even ripening. This happened everal years in a row.

This Spring, it started again. The problem seemed so entrenched, I was thinking I might have to cut the tree down.

Then I got a grip on myself. “You’re an optimist in public,” I thought. “You can’t give up on this tree.”

So I created a little vision: a healthy tree, lots of fruit. Me, making marmalade. (Never done that before. Always wanted to learn.)

Then I went to work.

I read up on brown rot and plum trees. Watched videos. Made a plan.

I pruned the tree carefully, giving the fruits more light and air.

I cleared all the “zombie” fruits from the previous seasons out of the tree. Yes, brown-rot fungus creates plum-zombies. They hang around to reinfect the next generation. Ugly things. (They look like giant spotted raisins.)

I got down on the ground and plucked out all the fallen “zombies” there. Cleared out all the old fruits. Even scraped up the old seeds. Some of these were years old. I was very thorough.

Rot still came last summer, but I was vigilant. I went through the tree almost every day, plucking any fruit showing any sign of infection, or of the holes from insects that help to spread it. They all went to the compost. (Fungus is very welcome in the compost.)

And the tree recovered.

I harvested several batches of plums. Ate a lot of them. Made marmalade. (It tastes great!) And I enjoyed the heck out of this whole process.

Very satisfying.

Obviously, there is a moral to this story. Even the ugliest brown rot can be defeated, if you have a clear vision and a solid plan, and you work systematically and thoroughly to change the conditions that gave rise to the infection in the first place.

Being an optimist doesn’t mean you just believe things will get better.

It means that you decide to make them better.

And you don’t give up.

(Feel free to apply this story about the plum tree as a metaphor, liberally.)

PS: I first posted this story on my social media, Instagram and Facebook. Since then, I learned a new lesson, about failure. When I made the last batch of marmalade for the season, I made a mistake in the preparation. It hardened to the consistency of hard candy. Again, I thought all was lost, but my wife reminded me that there must be solutions to such a problem, and there were. A quick trip to the Internet, especially Reddit, and the marmalade was saved: warmed up, re-liquified, re-hardened to the right consistency. Instead of being a failure, it became the best batch of the season.