I had several planting projects on the schedule for today. But before getting started, I took my usual stroll around the yard to check out the wonderful colors.

The camellia cluster looks like it's wrapping up its blooming season for this year.

I see more activity at the new maple tree.

The Sweetgum tree is now fully green.

The flowering dogwood tree is still blooming.

The driveway azaleas all look wonderful !

Both halves of the first azalea cluster are in full bloom.

The pink half always blooms first, and the white half plays catch-up.

The time period when both halves are in full bloom is very brief. In fact, it looks like the pink blooms may be starting to fade a little bit in the photo above.

The white half looks great !

A white bloom on the first azalea cluster.

The second azalea usually is the last one to bloom, and just started to bloom recently.

The third azalea has benefited greatly from pruning and shaping.

The blooms on the fourth azalea look great. But the overall shape is still a little off. It looks like something may have fallen on it a long time ago.

The fifth azalea has finished blooming and is also starting to drop its petals.

Like the Sweetgum tree in the front yard, the large tree in the side yard seen in the photo above also turns green very quickly. I have no idea what it is, but it looks nice.

The flowering cherry tree is now fully green.

I've always liked palm trees. I never saw an outdoor palm tree growing up in Pennsylvania. But the climate in northern Georgia coupled with the development of "Cold Hardy" palm trees means that such a thing exists around here.

Today, I took the Porsche plant hauler to Lowe's and brought some more home.

I brought two more "Cold Hardy" palm trees for the backyard. The plant seen in the photo above is a Silver European Fan palm tree.

The plant seen in the photo above is a Green European Fan palm tree.

The Silver European Fan palm tree went in the ground in front of my kitchen window.

Planting a Silver European Fan palm tree.

I added a layer of mulch to finish the install.

This means my palm tree inventory on this side of the yard includes a Silver European Fan, a Pindo, and a Windmill.

I put the Green European Fan Palm tree on the other side of the yard behind the spotted laurels and nandinas.

My backyard looks quite different than what it did since the beginning of the year.

So far, I've added four palm trees, a cherry laurel, and six pampas grass plants.

Hopefully, everything will grow back here.

The tags on the palm trees all identify them as "Cold Hardy," meaning they can tolerate brief periods of temperatures as low as zero degrees once established.

The tags also say that everything can tolerate "Part Shade." On paper, it looks like all of this should work.

We'll see how this goes.

With all of the palm tree planting completed for today, I headed back to Lowe's to pick up something else that caught my eye earlier.

Now that I've made a few changes in the backyard, it's time to direct some energy toward my "blank canvas" front yard. Last year, I added an October Glory maple tree for some shade. Today, I decided to add some color in the form of a Cleveland Select Flowering pear tree, which I'll get to tomorrow.