The Phantom Planter

 Something I've been observing on here for many years now is people who get involved in divisiveness, exposing, fault finding, creating divide and mayhem. You know the type I'm on about. Their pages are just filled with anxiety inducing doom and gloom. I've noticed though that so many of these types of people I have seen bring turmoil into their own personal lives.  The Buddha says all this in the Dhammapada about how what we think is creating our world around us.  This is just an observation, who knows I could be wrong. But I do know one thing, when I get involved in all that doom and gloom stuff that I said above you get locked into the ego mindset and it doesn't make you feel too good.  Nearly all content on here is about our egoes. Its all just our egoes fighting, arguing and showing off to other egoes.  Buddhism has made me look deep within and analyse my own being. What makes me feel good, what makes me feel happy. And a big part of that is contributing to...

 This time 4 years ago me and wee betty was driving all over England checking on loads of ancient famous trees for acorns.  We managed to get some from the Robin Hood oak, the Big belly oak and the Bowthorpe oak.  The secret location oak which is in someone's garden believe it or not was not producing acorns that year.  Although a couple of years after that I did manage to get some acorns from this massive mystical looking oak tree. One of the most empowering trees I've ever seen.  I managed to climb inside this beauty and was able to hold my hands out side ways and still was not touching the tree it was all hollowed out that much, this is the natural cycle of the oak tree.  The Crowhurst yew which I just wanted to see anyway on my travels, this tree is said to be around 4000 year old and is one of the oldest trees in Europe.  The acorns I got from The Robin Hood oak, Bowthorpe Oak and the Big Belly oak have all now been grown up and planted at The Pha...

 Planted in memory of the tree.  Have already drove past this phantom planted apple tree a few times from we planted it and what a buzz it is seeing it grow out of an old stump like this.  I'm starting to get very creative with my phantom plantings, plenty more tree planting ideas like this I have up my sleeve.  This one though is going to look amazing in years to come when it will be full of apples growing out of a massive stump like this. The old stump will provide so much nutrients that the apple tree will love.  I get messages and comments all the time saying does this way work or that way, how do I know my tree will survive and so on.  People do so much research and overthink everything when it comes to planting trees.  My advice is just get out and do it. Just make sure you plant it the right way up and believe in what your doing.  Some of the first trees I ever phantom planted with a mate of mine, we both planted the same type of pear tree....

 This is a message to the person or people that chopped down hundreds of our apple tree. Every time you chop them down people donate me large amounts of money. So either way I gain.  I would rather have the trees living and providing for nature and community though,   But just so you know that when you do chop them down I get vast amounts of money in donations.  People way back at the start of my phantom planting used to say when a tree got cut down that they think I did it myself with the amount of publicity it got. Well I can say for certain that I would never do such a thing. Watching my phantom planted trees thrive means more to me than any amount of money.  So whoever cut down my trees I hope you read this. I'm not going to stop phantom planting and the ones you cut will be replaced. I have the financial backing to do this due to your actions.  With every negative comes an equal or greater positive.  Please though whoever this was that cut th...

 I've been eyeing up this big old hollowed out tree stump for sometime now thinking every time I pass it that one day I'm going to phantom plant an apple tree right inside it.  So yesterday I did just that and went and bought all the stuff needed to do it. Can believe how much compost the trunk took, 500 litres it was plus loads more branches and leaf litter we had to gather around the place to bulk it up.  We then went back that night to give it a good water and added a load of woodchip mulch.  I look forward to watching this grow.  My head wasn't feeling the best yesterday, was feeling a bit stumped!  But after phantom planting this apple tree I felt buzzing. I challenge you to phantom plant a tree  Peace and love  The Phantom Planter and Wee Betty

 Back in April 2021 we had a massive wildfire on the Mourne Mountains and hundreds of my phantom planted trees were destroyed.  This holly tree in the pic was one of the few survivors. Our local news paper did a story on it back then titled "Miracle of the Mournes".  Since then there has been another wild fire and yesterday I decided to take a walk up the mountains to have a look and see if this holly has survived again.  I couldn't believe my eyes. Talk about the Phoenix rising from the ashes! You can see the remnants of its old scorched self and the new growth coming out from below that.  Out of the hundreds of trees I had phantom planted here over the years I only managed to find 3 survivors. The other 2 were hawthorns aka fairy trees.  Still this place is pretty special to me and I dont regret any of it.  Many years ago when I was struggling with drink and drug addiction I used to buy loads of trees and just hit the mountain me and wee betty and ma...