A Second Chance

 “For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again, but the wicked shall fall by calamity.”  Proverbs 24:16

I like that proverb.  It's all about not giving up.  It's about rising after you've fallen (everyone falls), dusting yourself off and moving forward, learning from your mistakes and trusting in God.  God uses imperfect instruments to accomplish His purposes.  He uses the foolish and weak so that He gets the glory and not man.

Second Chances.  I'm glad God is a God of second chances.  Many times things don't work out the way you planned, but we trust in Him that He has the best plan.  I was thinking about this today and how this plays out in nature as well as in our lives.

On January 1 of each year, I plant tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant from seed into little six pack seed pots.  I plant them into a seed starting mix that I make with equal parts topsoil, composted wood chips, and composted chicken litter.  As the seedlings grow, I water them with diluted fish emulsion.  I plant two seeds in each pot and as they grow, I separate them into individual pots prior to transplanting in the soil.

Some of the seeds don't germinate.  That is to be expected, especially when I'm using saved seed or seed that's a few years old.  I dump all the rich dirt from those pots in which the seeds didn't germinate into a bigger pot to reuse later.  In fact, here's one now:

I'll use that dirt for planting other crops in.  In six pots, I've got some herbs growing, specifically French Sorrel.  The leaves on this plant are so tasty!  This afternoon while watering the sorrel, something caught my eye.  I'm pointing at it, in case you don't see it.

It's a tomato seedling!  And it's doggone healthy.  These were seeds that were planted on January 1 and for whatever reason, didn't germinate.  But here we are almost six months later and conditions changed that allowed the seed to germinate.  And it's growing!  And here's another one:

And another!:

And two more!:

All in all there are seven tomato seedlings of unknow variety that were unsuccessful in growing the first time they had a chance.  Their peers passed them by, seasons changed, their time was up...  And yet, they got a second chance and by golly, they're growing.  A new lease on life.  There's a lesson there for us.  Maybe we're late bloomers, maybe we have failure after failure, but don't give up.  Stay rooted in the fertile soil (of God's Word) and grow!

I'm going to re-pot these tomato plants and nurture them.  It is a little early for the fall crop of tomatoes.  If nighttime temperatures are above 75 degrees, you run the risk of the pollen being sterile and the fruit won't set.  I generally plant my fall crop about a month or so later.  But these plants want to grow.  We'll use this as an experiment and see how our "Second Chance" variety of heirloom tomatoes fare.