The Phantom Planter

 Love these 2 plum trees by the side of the road at Seaforde layby on the way to Newcastle. These pics were taken yesterday and check out the flowers on these beauties!  If the bees do their work all these flowers will turn into plums.  I think a week ago they would have been even better, I cant get time to get around seeing them all in flower as I've that many. Facebook memories are amazing though for keeping me up to date when they flowered in the past years. You can notice that they dont always flower at the exact same time every year. Phenology is the word for these seasonal differences.  I phantom planted these plum trees about 8 years ago and they have thrived ever since.  I have fruit trees phantom planted at lots of laybys from Belfast out to Newcastle. This is me and wee Betty's regular route to the Mourne Mountains and for years now we have just been phantom planting fruit trees as and where we can along the way. And thats exactly what we did yesterday...

  Today is the anniversary of the passing of my wee mum. 14 years ago today on Friday 13th of all days she passed away. (She always was a bit of a witch) What reminded me of her anniversary was I seen a few swallows yesterday when out and about. The day she passed I remember I was at by buyers of anything-sellers of everything superstore and right when I got the call to say she had passed I walked outside, looked up, and there was all the swallows just arriving from their long journey from the other end of the world. These wee birds would have nested in my warehouse every year. Seeing these wee birds arrive that day was very comforting for me as for many years I used to love watching these wee birds come and live in my warehouse. If my wee mum could see me now! At the time when she passed I was right at the peak of my old dodgy life. Buddha or trees was not even a thought in my head.  I was the richest I had ever been money ways, but I was in the hell realm in my mind.  N...

 Most of you know that I took my son on a weeks bootcamp training out in Tenerife last week. We intermittent fasted every day only eating 2 meals a day, one at around 1pm and another about 6pm. We trained hard everyday in the outdoor calisthenics gyms first thing in the morning. Then it was up to the mountains doing workouts with rocks. In the afternoons we swam in the sea and hung out on the beach stretching. This past week my son has been saying how much his physique has changed with just one week training fasted. He says he's carried on this intermittent fasting from he's came back. Eating all the right foods and training harder in the gym than he has ever trained. My son grew up seeing a lot of bad stuff around me, bad habits and lifestyles that he seen as just normal. He then went off the rails himself for many years, got into all sorts of drink, drugs and trouble. Give me a boy and I'll make you a man is a quote thats so true. We dont realise how much our parenting ef...

 Me and Wee betty was out yesterday with my new battery mower cutting a rectangle out around 88 heritage Irish apple trees we phantom planted on council green space a few months ago. Still loving the fact that all these trees have been respected by the local community and all the running dogs seems to know to avoid them too. My plan is to keep going back and keeping it cut around the edges like this so when the council mowers come along they'll know just to keep cutting around the outside of this little orchard. This is a prototype for me that I'm experimenting with in planting up island type fruit forests on open green spaces around council estates. If this all goes to plan I think these mini orchards of heritage Irish apple trees should be all over housing estates. Only one way to find out if this works and thats by doing. It's how I always roll, Do - Believe and stay Enthused.  We all need to get out and do our bit for the community and nature. Look after you, your commu...

 Bought myself a battery lawnmower, so if you see a man with a mask on out cutting grass around the streets don't worry its only The Phantom Planter out looking after his trees! I bought it mainly for the kind of phantom planted orchards you can see behind Wee Betty in one of the pics. 88 heritage Irish apple trees we phantom planted here a couple of months ago. These are phantom planted on council green space in the Belvoir estate South Belfast.  I've phantom planted them all in a massive square shape and I'm going to keep a border cut out around the entire square so that when the council grass cutters come out they will not have to come close to the trees at all and hopefully just continue to cut around the square. This is a protype wild heritage orchard that I'm experimenting with. I'm thinking these types of orchards could be planted up in housing estates all over the city. Some estates in Belfast have massive unused green spaces like we have in our estate that ...

 Another busy day yesterday with the phantom planted fruit trees. Past couple of days I've been going round checking on lots of the trees making sure they are all ok. The majority are doing amazing apart from a group of fruit trees that were all cut at the base and the memorial tags left on a gooseberry bush that was phantom planted along side the fruit trees. I have no idea why someone would cut all the apple trees and not the gooseberry bush! Was also sad to see my friend Andy Tyrie's memorial tree missing too which was in another part of the estate. This went missing last week which looked like it was just ripped out from the base and no sign of the tree anywhere. Taking losses is to be expected when phantom planting and you just have to keep on phantom planting to make up for this. On a plus side though as I was out and about checking on all the trees I must have spotted about 20 more trees that were phantom planted by other secret planters. I could spot these amateur phant...