The Phantom Planter

 This is how your bare root fruit trees will come. Ring around your local nurseries today and see if they are stocking any. They are cheap and easy to plant.  It's that time of year again that I go on a phantom Planting binge. Used to be a drink and drug binge but now it's a tree planting binge. Leveling up with my soul debt with nature.     With the festive season coming around the world is being plunged into a mass of consumption at the expense of mother nature. Everything we use comes from nature. Maybe we should all try and give back this year and plant some trees.   For anyone that doesn't know the cranes in the background is Harland and Wolf where they built the Titanic..  Let's start a Titanic Tree Challenge!  #phantomplanter #titanicchallenge #Titanic

 This morning in my meditation it just came to me how much Buddhism has given me the mental and physical space to be able to offer, to even have the capacity in my mind to think for the greater good and to have the physical health to carry it out was not possible aiming for me king rat on the monopoly board! When I was locked in my own money driven greedy world the space in my mind was not there to offer any sort of help to nature, the world or the people around me.  I was caught up in so many self created problems. Like a spider caught in his own web is a person driven by fierce cravings is what the Buddha says. Being caught in my cravings for money and self gratification was destroying my physical health at the same time too. The last thing ever on my mind was planting a tree or helping the elderly . I was suffering the results of my own karma. I heard a Guru say the other day that what we see in the world is our own karma being played out. The world is the cinema screen and our mind

 A bit of a strange story for you guys. This is a pic of an apple tree we phantom planted 3 years ago, it was a memorial apple tree for the family in the pic. At this location we have around 20 other phantom planted fruit trees and we positioned this one nicely inline with the rest of the trees. I came back a few weeks later to check on the trees and this one was missing and my first thought was it got ripped out! But then as I walked on up a bit someone had moved the tree up into the bank a bit. This had me baffled. I was wondering what is going on here!! It was moved and was perfectly replanted and to this day is thriving and the family go to see the tree often. At this spot in South Belfast there is lots of old apple trees lining the bank and just a couple of years ago I learned that these were planted by another phantom planter some 40 years ago! As I was phantom planting one day a lady came out and said you've not been the only phantom planter to have been around here and went

 Chapter 20 - Slowly I was becoming an alcoholic With the type of money I was making and the lifestyle I was living at around the age of 20 or so I noticed more and more that I would be drinking daily. I could have spent the whole day in the bar playing pool and working too, as I was in the bar it was the perfect place for wheeling and dealing knocking out contraband. I always had a runner with me who would drive me around or be out delivering for me. The bar I used to always hang out in was right next to the Indian where my right hand man Butler worked at, so between the bar and the Indian lots of deals were going down daily. If I was beginning too have too much cash on me Butler would have came and collected some of it and put it by for me. Then after the bar it was up to the Indian for a feast and more beer, its amazing these little demons back then were slowly getting their claws into me. I also smoked a lot of cigarettes and took the odd hard drug back then also, but I was more a

 Another chapter from my book I was writing. Love reading these back over from my memories. When I read back on these though it makes me realise how important our influence is over the younger generation. I grew up and became what I was surrounded with. I became my Delboy Dad! He was the best though and my wee rebel mum. Love and miss you both every day, you have both made me the man I am today! Chapter 19 - I'm beginning to get rich! At about the age of 20 I had over 100k in cash, I had my finger in so many pies and everything I was touching was turning to gold. Me and Capone were building a nice business relationship, I've mentioned previous that Capone was a sofa importer and he brought in some top class leather sofas which I also sold for him too back then, this was another great money maker the way I was selling them. Capones sofas say cost me £1500, these were really high end quality Italian leather sofas, solid oak framed, triple stitched and Egyptian feather filled! Tha

 Heres some more stories from the book I was writing, hope you enjoy... Chapter 17 - Street trading time! Me and dodgy D were always getting our heads together while out about in great deals on wheels mobile pound shop talking about different money making ideas. We tried all sorts of stuff, we did markets and car boots, we even bought hundreds of umbrellas once and jumped out in the middle of Belfast city centre when it started to rain shouting get your umbrellas here now for a couple of pound, people did buy them too! We would have tried anything, God loves a trier is what my wee mum always said, you never know anything in life unless you try. But one idea dodgy D came up with was selling glow sticks at the raves, I thought this was a brilliant idea and there just happened to be a big rave coming up in the Kings Hall Belfast with thousands of people attending. So we bought 1000 glow sticks I think for about 20p each and went and stood outside the rave shouting 2 glow sticks for a five