Great day at the HQ.

 Great day at the phantom planters HQ yesterday. Good turnout to help tidy up and weed around the memorial trees at the orchard.

Its good to go back and let the trees know you care for them, some of the trees looked amazing after getting a good prune and weeding around the base.

20 years from now this place is going to look like some fancy orchard you'd find in a royal walled garden estate.

Only this orchard is going to be better right in the middle of a Belfast council estate.

You really never know how far your ripples go, the other day this woman came to my showroom to buy a mattress, we got chatting and something clicked with her and she said, your not who I think you are?? in an all taken back approach! 

I said whos that? 

dont know what your talking about I said.

She said your that planter man!! The man that runs around planting fruit trees.

I said, ah no way you got me!!

But she went on to say that it was from following my page that her garden is a jungle right now, she has all sorts growing in it!

She said she read my back story and thought to herself, well if this ex mad man can go around planting trees then so can we.

These are the people I love to touch, the ones that never think they can connect to nature or be part of it. Many think its only a thing for the upper classes or the well educated.

Nature is what we are, we are made up of it, interconnected and interdependent with every piece of creation around us.

Get a tree guys, take yourself into the wild and phantom plant it, just dig a hole and make sure its the right way up. 

The first tree I ever planted thats all I did. 10 years later not much has changed.

Go back and connect with your tree, sit by it and breath mindfully.

I love to do tree meditation, visualise the oxygen coming from the trees into you and the air coming out of you into the tree, building a connection with the tree and nature.

We've all been programmed to think connecting to nature is some sort of strange geeky thing to do. Sad but true.

When I look back at the old me, 30 years old, more money than sense, I was fat, bald, skin falling off me with dermatitis, breathing problems and heart problems. Couldn't walk right with back problems and trying my best to cover up my baldy head. 

I was a mess, soulless and riddled with addictions and negative emotions. In many peoples eyes though I had made it, I gathered over a million in cash by the time I was 30.

And what was about to happen for the next lot of years was a downward spiral that didnt look like it was going to end.

My body, mind and soul was polluted to the core.

Looking back now I'm so glad for all the robbers that came into my life and left me penniless, these people were blessings in disguise.

I had no other option but to go out and hug trees and seek something more than the ratrace.

Now I'm doing handstands and have the mental and physical capacity to offer. to offer to nature and community.

When we are all wrapped up in the toys and tinsel of the monopoly board we have nothing to offer selflessly.

Thank you nature, thank you Buddha.....

Peace and love 

The Phantom Planter