My secret prayer partner gifted me with a beautiful Asiatic Lily, ‘Orange Matrix’.  I kept it inside until I closed on the house and it lost it’s beautiful petals, but I have hopes it will be okay and come back next year – and for many more years to come.  I wasn’t sure where to plant it, but decided to put it right outside the garage door so I could see it whenever I came home.

There was already an area that possibly had annual flowers before, but it was grown over with weeds, so I went to work with my hoe to chop them up.  I then used a rake to pull out the weeds from the soil and leave the dirt.  Some stubborn weeds remained and I used my weeder to pull them up.  Then I emptied out some rabbit pans into the soil and mixed that in with the rake to give it some fertilizer.  A quick shovel into the loose soil and I had a hole for my new lily.  I tossed a little extra manure in the bottom of the hole then added the lily and lots of water before filling the hole back in with soil.

The lily looked a little lonely there, and I happened to find a 4 pack of dahlias for 75% off at the local greenhouse.  They are labeled as ‘Diablo’ and though they look a little rough, I think they will make it.  I planted these around the lily to add some more color.