The Phantom Planter

 If anyone is needing a mattress over Christmas me and wee betty will be out delivering Belfast and surrounding areas.  Send me a message if your needing one. All sizes in stock ready to go!  I nearly always carry mattresses in the back of my van, people send me a message and often I can have them it out in 20 mins.  I may be a converted tree planter and nature lover but I'm still a wheeler dealer at heart.  Love the buzz of delivering a mattress to someone's door, setting it up for them and getting payed old fashioned cash on delivery.  It gives me a tickle these types of business transactions.  There days though many businesses have all gone a bit constipated.  There is a market out there for real independent down to earth businesses.  Be consistent - Be enthusiastic and don't get caught up the lavish lifestyle eating out and drinking all the time and anyone can build a good decent business with patience and time. Email  Phantomplanter...

 How my phantom planting journey began. Around 10/11 years ago the idea just came into my head that why dont we have fruit trees growing around housing estates so people can have free fresh fruit to eat on their doorsteps and not all this chemical sprayed nonsense thats shipped all over the world that in reality is probably doing us more harm than good! When I was younger me and my mates would have always ventured up too the more upper class areas just outside my estate to look for apple trees in rich peoples gardens. It was always quite exciting doing this and theres something so connecting about climbing a tree and grabbing a nice big juicy apple and eating it while standing high up the tree, then filling your bags with apples and bringing them back down home for my mum to make apple tarts with or using them to dunk for apples on Halloween. These are fast becoming long lost memories for this generation, but not anymore though if we all get our acts together. Hopefully the phantom...

 Great turnout yesterday planting some apple trees at our new orchard to mark the Winter Solstice.  Thanks to all who came along.  The days will start to get longer from now.

 Wee betty overseeing all our work again yesterday, checking to make sure all the apple trees are planted in a straight line! The new heritage apple orchard is really coming together, got all the trees mulched and caged yesterday and about another 20 trees planted. Its the Solstice today and some of us are meeting up to plant a tree at sunrise to mark this special occasion. After today the days will start to get longer. I believe we should all make some sort of nature offering to mark the Solstice. Like a thank you to the creation for all we take from it. I've been a programmed parasite for most of my life, born into probably the biggest wheeling and dealing cut throat circles in Belfast. Everything we were selling came at the destruction of mother nature in some form or another, then to be turned into paper and digits and saved up like a big fat hamster with lots of it spent on self gratification, greed and gluttony! Not one thought was spared at the mayhem and destruction that ha...

 Went for our weekly dander up the Mournes yesterday, was a windy one up there! Gusts at the top must have been 100mph, literally you had to get on all fours in parts of it, Unreal. Definitely puts a bit of life in you heading up to places like that in cold windy days. Never do you come back from a mountain dander and say, well that was a waste of time! We are so lucky here in Belfast to have the Mourne mountains AKA Narnia just an hour down the road. This was the place CS Lewis got his inspiration from for Narnia as he walked here often.  I've gotten much of my inspiration from up there also. Been walking it most weeks now for years.  Think its important we all take time out and go to places like this for the day. It resets the mind or something.  We can get so caught up meaningless BS at times and when we go to places like mountains we realize we're just a speck of dust on this planet and nothing is really worth worrying or stressing about. Got back from there and ...

 Another productive day at our new heritage orchard yesterday, over 40 more holes dug out ready for planting this weekend and got in 3 tonne bags of mulch. Thank you so much to the 2 volunteers who worked away yesterday digging the holes. Your moving up the ranks rightly!  Its all been coming together nicely and at this rate we'll have the 300 apple trees planted in no time! This is the first time I've really recruited volunteers, most of the time I've just been winging it with my phantom planting, making sure they are planted the right way up and thats about it! Nearly all these 300 trees were grafted by myself and it was weeks of work. But I knew when it came to planting these there was no way I could possibly do all this by just winging it. So I put out a Paramili-Tree recruitment drive post and have now got a good inner council WhatsApp group going where we can all discuss what we are doing. Its a big relief off my head having a good team behind me. I've done that m...