What a difference a season makes! A summer dream of a dry creek has become a fall reality. After shoveling rocks, toating rocks, hunting for rocks and buying rocks, the creek winds across the front yard and runs every rainy day.

Now that cooler weather has arrived with the fall season, the focus turns to planting along the creek. When choosing plants I must consider the deer population and not create a deer grazing smogasboard. Research for deer proof plants has developed into a wish list : dwarf, variegated leafed guardinias, nandinas, camilias, Prussian blue allium, Texas sage, trumpet honeysuckle vine, azaleas,  and red dogwood trees.
The planting design must be determined. Mass plantings make the best shows.  In one gardening book from the library I learned about what one gardener calls a fish arrangement requiring nine plants: three on the center line, two on each side and one at each end which forms the oval fish shape. When the plants arrive the hole digging will begin. Let’s see, that’s nine holes here, seven over there in that curve, and…